The Sea of Sand
by ComsatAngel
Summary: The Fourth Doctor and Sarah end up, stranded and without the TARDIS, in the North African desert war of 1941. Suspicious British and hostile Italian soldiers are the least of their worries. There's also the sinister archaeological dig at Makin AlJinni
1. Chapter 1

**THE SEA OF SAND**

**1) Operations Commence**

Makan Al-Jinni

Cyrenaica

Libya

9th June 1940

The man ran. Ran without hope, without looking and without caring, in the unco-ordinated, flailing fashion of a runner nearing exhaustion. He had already lost his turban, after falling in a patch of soft sand, and his burnouse flapped raggedly in the chill desert night. A stitch wracked him and he stopped running, drawing in rasping breaths, leaning forward and resting his hands on his upper thighs. Above, diamond-hard stars looked down uncaringly. Apart from the gentle soughing of wind, nothing disturbed the centuries-old silence of the Libyan desert.

Looking back across the sands, nothing showed up against the desert. Ibn Al-Hassan allowed himself a momentary flash of hope, which dimmed and died within seconds. The Demon rolled over a dune top, following in his footsteps. Whilst not fast, it never slowed down or stopped, following him implacably. It's devil senses allowed it to track him over bare stone where his feet left no trace; he'd tried that an hour ago, when the demon first appeared out of the sands. Legless, squat and not bothered by the soft sands that slowed Al-Hassan considerably, it had emerged straight out of a dune and came directly at him, waving spindly black arms.

Yes. Only an hour ago, at dusk, Ibn had been squatting comfortably atop a dune, smoking one of the cigarettes the expedition distributed generously to their labourers. He was the night watchman for the site, a job he anticipated being easy – after all, out here at Makan Al-Jinni, there were no other people but the _ferenji_, the foreigners who came to dig and explore. The Bedu never came near the place. So a night watchman would have an easy time of things. Never mind that the other workers had left, making claims of demons, hauntings and spirits of darkness.

Ibn Al-Hassan cursed the _ferenji_ for putting him near the excavation, he cursed the Demon following him, he cursed his own poverty and greed that made the expedition payments look acceptable, and he cursed his stupidity for dismissing uncle Hassan's warning about Makan Al-Jinni.

He began to run again, wearily, being forced to the south by the pursuing demon, further into the desert sands and away from the campsite and help. The adrenaline surge that allowed him to outpace it earlier was a distant memory.

Yes, when the dune nearby the one he sat upon to watch the excavation quivered, rumbled and suddenly burst open to reveal the demon, he'd jumped upright in fear, dropping his cigarette and running headlong into the night.

The stitch came back again, worse than before, slowing him to a painful shuffle. His bare feet burned, his throat spasmed. Once more he bent forward, seeing the gritty sand up close. His mouth felt dry as a stone, his tongue like a towel.

Foolish man, he said, to the wind and sand. To take the lire and cigarettes and be happy with them. No living thing heard his despairing words; in this the most silent of regions there were no creatures to hear him.

Once again the soft soughing of the Demon caught his ear, and Al-Hassan managed to stagger on for a few paces, until his ankle gave way. He pitched to the sands, sprawling, feeling the cold grains dash against his face. The hissing grew louder very quickly, as the pursuing monster slid down the dune face towards him.

Ibn Al-Hassan's upthrown arm and hopeless wail of despair failed to stop the monster. He died there, on the desert sands, and nobody ever knew.

Makan Al-Jinni

Bartolomei/Templeman Expedition Campsite

June 10th 1940

Roger Llewellyn emerged from his stuffy canvas tent into the morning sun, already feeling gritty and hot, his eyelids assaulted by the glare. Brushing his wayward hair away from his eyes and hastily donning sunglasses, he waved a greeting to Professor Templeman, who was already up and arguing with Ben Cherif, loudly.

'Good morning, Mister Lewlin,' said Cherif, in his guttural English, ever polite. The Egyptian couldn't quite manage to pronounce the graduate's surname but tried gamely every day.

'You'll wake the others, Professor,' warned Roger, casting an eye over the other tents. Still asleep. The French members of the expedition hadn't been working with any commitment in the past few days, not that he could blame them. The war news from France, heard on the camp's radio set, was bad: the Germans had broken through at Sedan, rolling up the French Army, and the British Expeditionary Force was being pressed back in the north.

'Good!' said Professor Templeman, typically intolerant and abrupt. 'That'll teach them to lie in. And we need them even more, now.'

Roger cocked an eyebrow, uneasily aware that he could predict what the Professor was going to say.

'Don't tell me – Al-Hassan has vanished?'

Cherif nodded gravely, without speaking.

'Doubtless clutching a collection of booty,' commented the Professor. 'Again!'

Cherif frowned at this, and Roger cast an appraising eye at the lean, aged supervisor. Privately, Roger didn't believe that the labourers were stealing artefacts and it seemed Cherif shared that opinion, but the graduate couldn't very well disagree openly with his senior.

The argument had caused some of the expedition's other members to wake. A canvas tent flap twitched open and the tousled hair of Fulgoni preceded the Italian archaeologist, who rubbed his eyes, stretched and yawned enormously, then set to getting breakfast ready. The French members emerged from their tent, looking unhappy, conversing in a low mutter. They headed straight for the radio tent. Fulgoni spared them a single glance, then unfolded a collapsible table, normally used for dealing with finds. He unpacked the battered enamel plates, cups and cutlery from the cardboard box they usually sat in, checking each time he lifted a plate that no desert insect life had settled in the box overnight.

'What are you arguing for, Professore?' asked the Italian, lighting the primus stove to boil water. 'Another disappearance?'

Templeman chewed his lip, then his thumbnail.

Damnation! he thought. Our last Libyan labourer gone, vanished into the night like the others, and with his arms full of looted finds the expedition would never lay eyesight on again. That meant only the European expedition members and Ben Cherif remained, which meant that excavating would slow down even more. Damned untrustworthy natives!

'Eh?' he said, realising that Fulgoni had spoken to him. 'More delays, Fulgoni, more delays!'

One of the Frenchmen, Valette, left the radio tent looking more miserable than when he went in.

'No use,' he announced to nobody in particular. 'We cannot hear French radio.'

Templeman glared at him. Fulgoni was more practical.

'Is the radio set still functioning!' he asked sharply. When the Frenchman nodded he let out a sigh of relief. After all, in a crisis it was their lifeline – literally. They'd had to use it to summon aid for Benvenuti, stricken with appendicitis. Count Ricardo, "gallant knight-explorer of the air" had flown down specially from Benghazi to pick up the incapacitated archaeologist.

Roger unfolded half a dozen canvas chairs and set them around the breakfast table. He liked the morning ritual of breakfast, even if the meal was a travesty of what he considered right and proper. Back home breakfast meant kippers or bacon, toasted crumpets or porridge made with cream and honey – out here they had coffee, tinned milk, stale bread and tinned ham. Their weekly supply truck would be in tomorrow – oh happy day! – with fresh fruit, eggs, bread and vegetables.

'You should try again tonight,' said Fulgoni to Valette. 'Atmospherics will be better. Or at least different.'

The Frenchman darted a venemous look at the speaker. He might have made a barbed comment in his native tongue had not Bartolomei, the expedition's leader, emerged from his small tent. As usual, the Italian's moustache was neatly trimmed, his hair brushed and oiled and his chin freshly dashed with aftershave. His linen suit, salty, creased and dirty, nevertheless gave him an air of importance. The jacket would come off during work at the dig, the only concession Bartolomei made to heat and sunlight.

'Gentlemen, I heard raised voices,' he chided gently. 'There is no need to export the unpleasantness of Europe here, into Libya. Let us begin the day in a civilised manner, if we can.'

Taking a seat at the head of the table, he sliced up stale bread and began to sip the strong, milky coffee that Fulgoni had brewed. Professor Templeman glowered in annoyance at being told off, and attacked his bread and ham with a vengeance. Borguebus left the radio in disgust and joined the seated party, choosing only coffee. Di Fellica, the last man to wake, came late to breakfast and got the dregs of the coffee.

Finally, when he deemed everyone to have finished, Bartolomei looked mildly at Professor Templeman and moved his head slightly forward, a gesture of invitation.

'The last Libyan ran off last night,' said Templeman. 'Now all we have to help us is Ben Cherif.'

Bartolomei looked puzzled.

'Another disappearance? After we doubled his wages? Really, this is most odd.' He muttered quietly to himself in his native tongue for a few seconds. Templeman stoked up his meerschaum whilst others smoked cigarettes.

Ben Cherif paused in passing behind Roger.

'It is this place. I have seen the lights at night, and heard wind when there is none. The demons of this place took them,' and he hawked and spat on the sand, moving on. Roger looked after him uncertainly.

Roger and Fulgoni took the dirty plates and cleaned them with sand.

'The Professore is not happy, eh?' remarked Fulgoni, twitching one shoulder in the direction of the table. Roger nodded whilst shaking sand off the plates.

'His one intention is to finish this dig and get it published in the journals. Nothing else matters to him. Not me, or you, and certainly not the Libyans and Egyptians.'

Fulgoni made a wry face.

'He has to care now. With seven labourers gone, we are his labourers.'

They finished abrading dirt off the dishes and replaced them in the box. Di Fellica came over to point out Roger.

'Doctor Bartolomei asks you to stay and catalogue the site sketches.'

The young graduate shrugged. His turn to avoid heavy work today, which meant he'd be out on the dig tomorrow. A reasonable assumption, yet completely wrong.

Ben Cherif and Bourgebus went to the tool tent and emerged, pushing two very battered wheelbarrows, each laden with shovels, picks, balls of string, wooden planks and pegs. The other members collected cameras, sketch pads, pencils, rulers and other equipment too fragile or valuable to be left in the tool tent. The motley collection began the trudge across the sand-strewn gravel, heading to where the dunes began. The dig was another half a kilometre further into the dune sea, a tiring slog in the loose sand.

'Well, better get rolling,' said Roger to himself, liberating a bottle of mineral water from the stores tent.

The seven members trudged doggedly into the dunes, leaving the rolling, undulating gravel plain behind them. Long practice meant the only sound came from the two squeaking wheelbarrows; conversation would be saved for the actual dig itself.

Fulgoni felt the familiar sinking feeling in his stomach when the massive black pillars appeared over the dunes ahead, a nameless dread he couldn't explain or rationalise away. He didn't believe the missing Egyptians and Libyans had run off; no, their disappearance was directly linked to this dark and sinister place. The how he couldn't imagine, but a man didn't simply run away in the night in this trackless waste, without food or water or shelter. Unconsciously he crossed himself, only realising what he'd done when the brooding Valette blinked in surprise. Fulgoni glanced around, to discover that all the other member's attention lay on the buildings ahead. The only good thing to say about this place in the armpit of the desert was the total absence of flies, which were usually an annoying and persistent torment for any dig.

The group topped a final dune before the excavation, pausing to look over the site. Once again Fulgoni felt that anticipation of awe and dread, taking in the vista as if for the first time.

He stood, alongside the others, at the rim of a vast, shallow bowl in the desert fully a mile across, in the middle of which lay the buildings excavated so far, and giant rolling billows of sand that hinted at other constructions hidden under the yellow drifts. Makan Al-Jinni. The enormous rectangular black building dubbed "The Temple" was the only one completely uncovered, standing fifty feet tall atop a podium that was itself thirty feet high. Massive pillars held up the roof, and equally massive steps led up each face of the podium. Further into the bowl lay the partially un-covered circular construction, which Templeman and Bartolomei dubbed "The Dais". Standing erect from the multi-hundred ton mass of The Dais was the feature that had originally attracted attention in this desolate spot, the tapering black pylon. Much of the overburden had been removed from this part of the structure, leaving a mass of sand still lying around the base. Fifty yards away another pylon, identical to it's more apparent brother, showed less than half its height through the layers of sand.

Wheelbarrows creaking and squeaking, the group made their way down the slope to the planked walkway and into the bottom of the shallow depression, Fulgoni casting a last longing look at the sky behind. Every member of the troupe seemed to bow their shoulders once they lost sight of the dune sea. A stillness and silence hung over the abandoned buildings, made heavier by the passing of countless centuries since people had walked or worked here. Only Professor Templeman seemed entirely ignorant of the atmosphere, stoutly proclaiming that work today ought to begin on further removing overburden from the second pylon. Doctor Bartolomei disagreed urbanely and a discussion took place whilst others took tools from the barrows and waited for a decision.

Di Fellica nodded back over the way they had come, where sand slid down to fill their footprints.

'I'd prefer to be where the boy is,' he said, using their nickname for the young graduate.

'He might have vanished too, when we get back,' said Fulgoni, only half-joking. 'Ah, we're wanted.' Doctor Bartolomei waved them forward.

'Gentlemen,' he said. 'We are going to take down the overburden on the second pylon. Can you set up a path with wooden planking for the wheelbarrows? Take it out to the eastern spoil heap.'

Thus began several hours of toil, moving tons of sand from around the pylon. Gradually the tapering column emerged from the concealing sands, and Fulgoni studied it with a practiced eye. Whilst he might lack the depth of Templeman's experience or Bartolomei's knowledge about archaeology, his degree in Classical Antiquities gave him an insight. He chatted to Di Fellica whilst they sweated, not feeling like conversing with the sullen French duo: Templeman and Doctor Bartolomei would undoubtedly not wish to hear his musings.

What did he know about this unquiet site? Firstly, the black pylons did not exhibit any wear or erosion. Not even at their tips, where they had been exposed to the elements for God alone knew how many years. Naturally the shroud of the overburden would have protected them once covered over, yet they stood as if their mysterious builders finished contruction only yesterday. What were they made of? The material looked like polished jet, glossy and dark, but it resisted the picks and hammers used to take samples. Fulgoni suspected it of being a vitreous enamel coating, perhaps similar to that used in the vitrified hill forts in Northern Europe. Likewise, the massive bulk of The Temple stood pristine, untouched by the literal and metaphorical sands of time.

The absence of any style or decoration puzzled him, too. No heiroglyphs, no pictograms, not lettering or embellishment of any sort. It was possible that applique decorations had originally been painted onto the black material, and been worn away, revealing the starkly functional architecture. No personality, that was how he defined it. Nothing but what was strictly necessary.

Overall, the site so far demonstrated that same lack of personality. Normally on a dig there were finds, artefacts, remnants of the builder's lifestyle or the people who used the buildings. Not here. Not so much as a single pot sherd had come to light. Fulgoni didn't believe that the six Egyptian and two Libyans had absconded with armfuls of relics, whatever Professor Templeman might say, as a reason the site had been bare. One welcome change from every other site in the desert he'd visited, and Cairo too for that matter, was the absence of flies. The absence of flies he could put up with in this strange collection of buildings.

And the scale! The size of the steps leading up to the interior of The Temple meant an undignified scramble by the expedition members. Finally Professor Templeman refused to embarrass his dignity (and his considerable size) any longer and a wooden scaffold had been erected, when the Egyptians were still around to build it. Steps so large a man would have to be a giant to use them.

Sighing, he pushed another barrowful of sand up the spoil heap, reflecting that his puzzlement at least had the benefit of passing the time. In an hour or so the sun would be at it's zenith and the whole team would spend the hottest part of the day lying under canvas shelters, or make their way back to camp.

Having managed to put the most recent collection of sketches in order, with annotations about them in the log book in English, schoolboy French and laborious Italian, Roger went back into his tent to lie down and read for a little while. The sun was not yet at it's peak and the endless vistas of level rock, dust and sand quivered and throbbed with heat. He continued with his dog-eared volume of Keats, until boredom made him sit up again.

How dull and dead this landscape was! The Nile valley was positively idyllic compared to _this_, he told himself, looking out of the unlaced tent. Even a breeze would only stir up the fine dust outside, giving everything the appearance of being floured. Sure enough, the winds were blowing from the north and stirring up a dirty grey blanket of grit.

'It's a truck!' he exclaimed in surprise a full minute later. 'The supplies must be here early!'

Slowly the moving dust cloud drew nearer, trailing a long hanging plume of grey behind it. Roger saw a small car leading the truck, making him frown. Who could that be? Makan Al-Jinni was so remote that there was no passing traffic. Only those with business here ever travelled out this far – the supply truck, in the first instance.

The closer the truck and car came, the less happy he felt. The car appeared to be painted in a camouflage scheme, meaning it belonged to the Italian Army. The big Fiat truck behind it was definitely a military vehicle, since two soldiers sat in the back.

The car swung in behind the row of tents and came to a halt. The driver jumped out and opened the passenger side door for an officer, who stepped out and looked around. The truck pulled up behind the car, engine revving, until the officer waved a hand at the driver. Once again a silence fell.

Feeling an unpleasant lump in his stomach, Roger stood and left his tent.

'Hello? Can I help?' he asked the officer, who looked startled for a moment, before recovering his poise.

'Tenente Cabrillo,' said the officer, giving Roger a smart salute as he strode over.

'Ah,' said Roger, mentally translating "Tenente" into "Lieutenant". 'Roger Llewellyn, of the Templeman-Bartolomei expedition. What can I do for you, Tenente?'

The two soldiers had jumped down from the truck and were looking at Roger with curiosity. Roger was deciding to try out his poor Italian when the officer spoke again.

'This is rather embarassing, Signor Llewellyn, but I am afraid you are my prisoner,' said the officer, with a sad smile, unholstering his pistol.

The words took several seconds to make sense to Roger, whose jaw then dropped in comical fashion.

'Prisoner? Prisoner? Your prisoner?' was the most coherent he could manage. The two soldiers had unslung their rifles and were fixing bayonets.

'Indeed,' said the Tenente. 'I trust you will not make difficulties?'

'Why – why are you doing this!' exclaimed Roger.

The officer looked keenly at him.

'You are not aware? You did not know? Signor Llewellyn, a state of war now exists between England and Italy.' Seeing Roger's genuine bewilderment, he carried on. 'Il Duce declared war on England and France earlier today, Signor. Consequently I have orders to arrest the enemy members of your expedition.'

Roger, aghast at the prospect of being a prisoner, leaned weakly against the tent, which sagged and shed dust.

The Italian officer stood back and looked perceptively at Roger. The Englishman didn't look like a menace.

'Are the other members of the expedition not present?' asked Cabrillo, as the two soldiers poked amongst the sleeping tents.

Roger shook his head.

'No. No, they are all at the dig. At the excavation,' he added, seeing the other man's lack of comprehension. 'Oh – except for Benvenuto. He was evcuated by air several weeks ago. Appendicitis.'

'Ah,' nodded the other man. 'Please wait in the staff car whilst my men and I detain your comrades. The path leads to the excavation?'

Roger nodded, then numbly walked to the small staff car, to sit in the back whilst the swarthy driver watched him with muted suspicion. Half an hour later the seven excavation members hove into view over the sand sea, pushing their wheelbarrows. The Tenente walked at the front of the column, the two soldiers at the back, once again with their bayonets fixed. When the group got close enough, Roger saw that Templeman's face was a muted purple, indicative of baffled rage. Valette and Bourgebus looked both sullen and dismissive, managing to convey Gallic contempt for ther captors. The Italian members of the expedition looked as stunned as Roger felt.

Professor Templeman and Doctor Bartolomei displaced Roger from the rear of the staff car.

'Are you leaving, too, Doctor?' asked Roger. The dapper Florentine made a wry face.

'Certainly, Roger. With only three of us left the work cannot progress. Fulgoni and Di Fellica are collecting the data we have. I regret you will have to join them in the truck as the Tenente wishes the Professor and I to remain close to him.'

Templeman was muttering under his breath into his beard, sounding immensely angry.

It's a good job that officer's got men with guns to back him up! thought Roger. The old man's angry enough to kill him with a pick-axe.

His last view of the tent collection comprising the Templeman-Bartolomei expedition came from the back of the truck, under the watchful eyes of the two Italian soldiers.

It was desperately hot, dull and hard work, but I never imagined I'd miss it! And who left a wheelbarrow at the top of the dunes? The damn thing's falling down the dune. No, wait a bit, they brought both barrows back into camp. What was that thing?

Further worries about the distant object were replaced by more immediate ones, like where they were going to get water from in their journey. And food, too. No supplies from the supply truck, only stale bread, tinned ham and coffee, thrown into a sack by Di Fellica in considerable haste.

Unseen, concealed by heat haze, dust and distance, Roger's "wheelbarrow" moved slowly towards the tent encampment with the deliberation of a machine and the caution of an animal.

**2) Farmers of the Sea**

Farmer Selig wafted his scoop over the barely-moving waves, standing knee-deep in brine and feeling his footwebs scrape over the sandy ocean bottom two metres below. He believed that agitating the algae with a few near passes made them provide more energy when harvested. Perhaps only fractionally more energy per square metre more than algae left strictly alone. Regardless, he was still here and harvesting algae when half of his fellow hatchlings were long gone, fodder to the Warriors.

Realising that the suns had passed noon-and-noon-and-a-half, he stopped his sweeping motion, standing up to look further out to sea. The shallow lagoons lay baking under the sunslight, busy creating life energy. In fact it was time to stop harvesting and make for the shore, to stock up on water and bottled algae. Not that Farmers like him were permitted to wear a watch of any sort, farmers not being entitled to technology, but long usage and experience told him that he could make for dry land.

The long, low hutments that served as the Farmer's accomodation stood well inland, beyond the sand dunes and bordering the barren hinterland, that desolate sweep of continent where nothing lived or grew. Farmer Selig needed to walk there to get his supplies – their Overseers at this subsection of the coastal colony made certain only those who got to the buildings got fed and watered. He plodded along, his footwebs beginning to stir up the powdery, dead dust once he moved off the beach dunes. It tickled his nose and lightly coated his proboscis, meaning he had to stop and shake the irritating grit away.

Ahead of him earlier arrivals were also making their slow and weary way over the dead ground to the hutments. This time an unpleasant surprise awaited him and other arriving Farmers – a Warrior stood inside the granite structure, behind the door and facing inwards, looking at the room, the tables and the shortly-to-be-dining Farmers.

Under this hostile gaze, the nervous and hungry Farmers absorbed their energy quotient with haste. The Overseers remained at their own table, conversing quietly, until one nodded at the Warrior.

A late arrival came into the hutment, a Farmer the Overseer must have seen hurrying to get what remained of the food and water.

'Violator!' snapped the head Overseer. Taking his cue, the Warrior strode forward and extended his proboscis forward, the hundreds of tiny probes in the end connecting with the Farmer's back. The hapless victim instantly became rigid, unable to even scream, as his life energy was drained out of him. In the space of twenty seconds the bulk of the Farmer shrivelled and collapsed inwards, until all that remained was a dry, lifeless husk on the floor.

'Violator punishment, serfs,' said the Warrior loudly, bristling with energy, as well he might be. 'Lateness is inefficient. Be warned in future!'

Farmer Selig pushed aside the bowl of dried algae revenants, ducked his upper torso and left the hutment quickly, not daring to look up at the Warrior. He only straighened up outside, scared and humiliated.

Another Farmer dead, of a supposed "Violation". A Violation that hadn't existed until now, he told himself bitterly. A Violation invented so the Warrior could indulge himself in life energy.

Farmer Selig set himself away from the desert and towards the sea.


	2. Chapter 2

**3) Sundry Diversions**

Sarah could tell the Doctor was annoyed without even looking at him. His insistent stamp across the TARDIS floor, around the time rotor console, and the rustling of his scarf while it was being thrown dramatically over a shoulder, all conveyed the sense of annoyance.

I know what he's doing, she realised. Waiting for me to ask why he's annoyed. Well, he can wait! If he won't tell me what's wrong in the first place, I am not going to rush in where angels fear to tread.

The Doctor paced a little longer, until his patience ran out and he stopped to look fiercely at Sarah Jane, who was busily writing up hastily-made notes into a coherent outline.

'Outrageous!' he snapped. 'Absolutely outrageous!'

Sarah stopped scribbling with her biro and looked up.

'I don't think so,' she replied, deliberately misinterpreting the Time Lord's comment. 'With D-Notice Committee approval these memoirs might well see the light of day. A little edited, of course.'

The Doctor frowned deeply, aware that Sarah was teasing him.

'That's not what I meant.'

The young journalist's eyes twinkled.

'I know. Look, Doctor, whatever's sent you into a brown study – well, you won't tell me about it or discuss it, so I take refuge in my work, for what it's worth.'

'It's an international best-seller, or it will be,' grumbled the Doctor, doing a little teasing of his own. Seeing Sarah's eyebrows shoot up he hastily backtracked. 'But you never heard me say that!'

Flattered by the anachronistic news, Sarah jumped down from her perch on the Louis XV chair and stood, hands on hips.

'Okay, now I have to ask – whatever is the matter?'

In answer, the Doctor pointed to the time rotor, which had been rising and falling in characteristically wheezy fashion all this time.

'That, Sarah Jane Smith, that is the matter.'

Sarah favoured the time rotor with a long look.

'You're the expert, Doctor, not me, but it seems to be working perfectly.'

'Pah! Perfectly!' snorted the Doctor. 'If it were working perfectly then we'd have landed a good half hour ago,' and he threw his scarf over his shoulder, fished in one of his capacious pockets and produced a small, wrinkled paper bag.

With a touch of worry, Sarah checked her watch. Time, of course, was relative, most especially so in the TARDIS. She had therefore made certain to time her writing – which had begun over an hour ago according to her watch. Yet the Doctor had told her the short hop to Mars in the twenty third century would take twenty minutes, at most.

Sarah had become accustomed to the TARDIS and it's occasional erratic behaviour, which she put down to several things: the machine's quasi-sentient state, the Doctor's incessant tinkering with it and lastly his reluctance to carry out any repairs until forced to. Or at least for this incarnation of the Doctor – the Third Doctor had taken the TARDIS to bits in order to try and regain his knowledge of how it functioned.

Thinking hard, the Doctor chewed on a jelly-baby. Without looking he knew it was a green one – chemical addictive T53 for the colouring. His taste buds interpreted the various flavourings, the gelatine, the dusting of icing sugar, the resistant exterior and pliant interior. Very conducive to forensic thought, chewing a jelly-baby, he had long maintained.

'Is the TARDIS malfunctioning?' asked Sarah, her voice coming from a long way off, or so it seemed to the meditating Doctor.

'Hmm?' he replied. 'Oh. Jelly-baby?' he said, offering the bag. Seeing Sarah's look of concern he abruptly returned to the here-and-now. 'Malfunctioning? No, certainly not. At the moment it is operating under the control of an external influence.' His expression remained annoyed, instead of shading into worried.

'The Time Lords?' guessed Sarah. She'd seen this once before, when they had been involuntarily diverted to Skaro by the Time Lords.

'Very perspicacious. Yes, the Time Lords – those interfering Gallifreyan nincompoops!' replied the Doctor, his voice increasing in volume as he spoke. 'Nincompoops!' he repeated, looking around the TARDIS in a full circle as if for an audience.

'I heard you the first time,' complained Sarah.

'Ah, but you don't know what "nincompoop" means in Old High Gallifreyan!" replied the Doctor, a look of supreme mischief on his face.

Sarah bit the inside of her lip. No, she didn't know, and she didn't want to know. What she did want to know was – where were they going?

'If the Time Lords are steering us, where are we going?'

Her companion gave a shrug.

'I can't tell. Thank's to their meddling, all the TARDIS readings are defaulting to zero. It could be anywhere at any time.'

The time rotor, with a fine sense of drama, settled finally to rest with a resounding thump. Silence hung in the control room. Both occupants looked at each other.

Carefully, the Doctor checked the Absolute Referential Chronometer on his console. It displayed "000000 AD" in proud red numerals. With a sigh, he turned on the external monitor, before checking the Circumlocution Topography display. This displayed "Planet: Unknown Galaxy: Unknown Universe: Unknown Chronoplasty: Unknown"

'Looks like a quarry, or a sandpit,' commented Sarah, looking directly at the monitor. 'Not very promising.'

The Doctor looked keenly at the monitor image. Level sand and gravel, rising in gentle billows.

'Habitable biosphere. Tolerable atmosphere, but a surprisingly high level of hydrocarbons. Odd,' he said to himself, reading off a gauge.

Sarah looked at the screen again. Hydrocarbons – Doctor-speak for petrol fumes, which was odd when you thought about it, since the landscape outside lacked any traffic.

'So we don't know where we are, or when we are, or what we're supposed to be doing?' All she got in reply was a nod whilst the Doctor paced round the TARDIS console, checking dials and gauges and readouts. 'Great!' she said sarcastically. 'I've been diverted from Orly to Charles de Gaulle, and from Heathrow to Birmingham, and got a reason in both cases. Do the Time Lords expect us to guess what to do?'

Stopping the pacing, her companion looked at her with a dark, almost forbidding look.

'Sarah, what do you know about the society of Time Lords?'

'Oh, now you're asking!' replied Sarah, half-amused. 'Not much. They don't like to interfere with other cultures, I remember you telling me that.'

'Very true. Things have to be catastrophically bad for them to interfere directly. Now, why do you think they tolerate a maverick, an exile, a free-booter like myself, hmm?' He softened the inquisitorial tone of his question with a small smile.

The Doctor knew very well why the insular and superior Time Lords on Gallifrey tolerated his temporally-footloose existence; he made an excellent proxy when they needed to meddle in someone else's affairs. Using him, willingly or not, as an agent of intervention meant that they maintained their proud boast of "non-interference". Giving him the minimum amount of information about a situation meant he had to discover the peril himself. Less liability of temporal contamination, the Time Lords would say; less work for themselves, the Doctor would reply.

'Well – because you tend to get into hot water. And that means they don't have to?' ventured Sarah.

'A palpable hit, and close enough,' declared the Doctor. 'Let us see what we have been let in for.'

'K9!' called Sarah, wanting their mobile guardian, sentry, computer and laser along, just in case. 'K9! '

The mechanical dog merely sat on the floor, inert.

'He's not been active for several minutes,' explained the Doctor. 'I rather suspect the Time Lords have deliberately rendered him inoperable.'

Doffing his hat, the Doctor activated the TARDIS doors and stepped outside, gesturing for Sarah to join him.

'Hot,' she said, noticing the baking heat instantly. Her linen dungarees might be a bit warm for this weather. Luckily her tee-shirt was cool enough. The Doctor remained in his coat, hat and scarf, seemingly unaware of the roasting heat.

'Single yellow dwarf,' he said, pointing to the sun. He unrolled a yo-yo and managed a few desultory casts. 'One gee.'

'Earth?' guessed Sarah. The Doctor shrugged his shoulders.

'We don't know that there aren't three suns just below the horizon.'

' "And all around the lone and level sands stretched bare –",' recited Sarah, casting an appreciative eye over the landscape. The terrain consisted of pea gravel and sand, on an underlying rock substrate. No features could be discerned in the hostile vista, which shimmered and danced with heat, casting back the rays of the sun like a crude stone mirror.

'Ozymandias. Shelley. The Lake District. A greater contrast couldn't exist, could it?' asked the Doctor, looking in all directions at the featureless grey-brown nothing that confronted the two travellers. They took a direction at random and began walking, keeping close together for company. Sarah later felt sure that at least an hour had passed, even if her watch insisted that they only left the TARDIS environs five minutes before.

'You said it –' began Sarah, before a gigantic roaring bellow from overhead swamped her words. She threw herself at full length in the dust away from the TARDIS, noticing that the Doctor remained upright for several seconds longer than was sensible or healthy.

The fantastically overbearing sound diminished rapidly, moving off into the distance. Sarah coughed dust from her mouth, brushed it out of her eyes and dragged her fringe back to it's rightful place.

'I have an idea about where we are,' said the Doctor enthusiastically, looking at the skies. 'Although _when_ might be a little more difficult,' he added, _sotto voce_. The intruding sound-assault of moments before began to increase in volume, approaching from behind the TARDIS, resolving into -

'An aeroplane!' exclaimed Sarah.

A single turbo-prop canvas-over-wood-and-metal-frame aircraft, realised the Doctor. With a camouflage scheme, which indicated military intent. Bulbous nose, indicating radial engine, monoplane, three-blade propellor. Sarah noticed the large white cross painted on the tail, and a curious blue shield design below the cockpit, painted on the fuselage.

The artificial butterfly soared into a loop high above the travellers lying on the ground, turning back onto itself and roaring – Sarah registered that at so negligible a distance the machine really did roar – back again. The Doctor looked at the cockpit, seeing the astonished face of a pilot looking at him for nearly one-third of a second. The man might well be astonished, seeing a London landmark appear from nowhere in the middle of a desert.

'Sarah, we need to move,' he cautioned, stooping to grasp her, painfully, by the elbow. 'Quickly now!' and he exerted a considerable degree of the strength that normally lay dormant. Sarah found herself jerked upright and waltzed off on one leg away from the now far distant TARDIS. Looking backwards, the Doctor hissed a curse in no human language and threw her prone, following the action himself.

Sarah cradled her head in her arms, finding that she could look backwards through the gap. She saw the aeroplane swoop down on the TARDIS, and the flash of twin machine-guns set above the aircraft's nose. A storm of dust and rock rose up about the time machine, with glowing tracers ricocheting away in all directions. Finally, with grand and awful deliberation, a bomb detached itself from the aircraft's belly. It fell with uncanny precision upon the dark blue police-box, resulting in a huge explosion that only cleared after a whole minute.

By then, the aircraft had gone. So had the TARDIS! While Sarah could see the attacking fighter diminishing slowly into the distance, of the time-travel machine there was no trace.

Next to her, the Doctor sat up and stared, aghast, at the crater where the TARDIS had stood. He clapped a hand to his forehead, nearly dislodging his hat.

'Oh no!' he gasped.

"Oh no"? worried Sarah to herself. "Oh no" was not good. The TARDIS, so the Doctor had said – practically boasted, really – was indestructible, certainly invulnerable to attack with any human weapons. It had once taken a direct hit from a V1 without suffering a scratch on it's paintwork, according to Mike Yates, so why did the Doctor seem so worried? And where had it gone?

'I must have left the HADS active,' muttered the Doctor, as much to himself as Sarah. He became aware of a tugging on his sleeve. 'Hmm? Yes?'

Dusty, hot and now worried, Sarah merely glared at her companion.

' "Hostile Action Displacement System",' explained the Doctor. 'Moves the old girl out of any danger she might be in.' Normally a very good idea, enabling the vehicle to avoid danger when he wasn't around to keep an eye on her.

'Oh, very good. Moves to where?'

A slightly crestfallen Doctor rolled his eyes.

'Ah, yes! Where to. A random nearby location.'

Sarah raised her eyebrows. She looked around her, seeing nothing but undisturbed empty desert as far as the eye could range. No familiar blue police box in sight.

'Ah! Yes, I did say "where to", didn't I? There may also be an element of "when" in addition,' added the Doctor breezily.

'Meaning?' asked Sarah, dangerously quiet and calm. The Doctor cast her a sideways glance before replying.

'Well, meaning that there might be a degree of temporal drift. I haven't reset the HADS for several decades, you know, and it may very well throw the TARDIS off by a few months or so,' he blustered.

'So. We may be stuck here for several months? I don't see that being a problem, Doctor,' replied Sarah.

'You don't?' he answered, looking relieved.

'Because without any food, water or shelter we're not going to last more than a day or two!' finished Sarah, fiercely.

She did have a point, thought the Doctor.

'You're forgetting that the Time Lords have diverted us here, Sarah. They have a reason for that, even if we can't see what it might be at present.' Silence fell for a minute while the Doctor turned to look at the desert in all directions. 'And even if the reason quite escapes me, also.'

Sarah mimicked the Doctor's searching, not seeing anything except dust and sand and rock, all hazed and vague-seeming thanks to the ever-present heat. The desert undulated erratically, like the ocean suddenly frozen in one second of time, stretching limitlessly to the horizon. No trees, no houses, no rivers, no animals. Nothing, in all directions. The air lay still and dead, without any movement.

In fact, were they still on Earth? That aircraft might well have been an alien aeroplane. Sarah didn't recognise the markings.

'Do you know where we are, Doctor?' she ventured. 'I mean – is this still Earth?'

The Doctor took off his hat, and dropped it upon her head, making a cautionary gesture.

'No, no, you keep that on. Prevents sunstroke. Here, sit down. Conserve your energy.' He patted the sandy grit next to himself as he settled into a yoga position. 'Is this Earth? I suspect so, Sarah. From the evidence of the TARDIS sensors and what we've seen so far, I think we may have landed in the midst of one of your species' interminable efforts to exterminate itself.'

'War. Even better. Lost in the middle of nowhere, during a war. Doctor, can things get any worse?'

For a rhetorical question, it begged a response. The Doctor responded, pointing northwards. A faint smudge of dark brown discoloured the horizon.

A sandstorm. Not fatal, but hideously uncomfortable and unpleasant, providing they weren't buried by sand.

'I had to ask,' grumbled the young journalist.

'Help may be at hand,' consoled the Doctor. His sharp eyes were focussed on the middle distance, where a plume of dust appeared, moving steadily across the desert floor. The distance was difficult to judge; perhaps a mile away, headed southwards and away from the oncoming storm. Not towards them.

The Doctor rolled his scarf up tightly, keeping one end grasped firmly in his hand, then threw it into the air. Sarah simply stared at this peculiar behaviour, which the Doctor repeated several times. Seemingly pleased by his bizarre action, he beamed at Sarah and sat down next to her.

Less than a minute later the plume of dust had altered course. A small truck was responsible for creating the trail, becoming visible as it came closer.

The Doctor took the vehicle in critically; a half-tonner by the look of it, with a small cargo body behind the open cab. The front windscreen lay folded forward, allowing the driver a clear view. A red and black square had been painted on the driver's mudguard, along with a small black rodent in a white circle. The driver had goggles on, and a dirty handkerchief tied over his lower face. His passenger, naked from the waist up, slapped a battered tin helmet on his sand-dusted hair and stepped onto the running-board as the vehicle slowed to a stop. A rifle dangled in his left hand.

'How perfectly splendid!' enthused the Doctor. 'Hello, chaps. I wonder, would you mind terribly offering us a lift?' he beamed at the two suspicious men with ingenuous charm.

Sarah stood up, removing the Doctor's hat from her head, causing both men opposite to look surprised.

'Bloody hell! Tam, that's a woman!' exclaimed the rifleman. Tam, the driver, pushed his goggles up to reveal incongruously clean eyes and looked Sarah up and down, confirming that the slender "man" in spotless linen clothing was really a woman.

'Don't be rude, Sarah. Introduce yourself,' prompted the Doctor.

'Sarah Jane Smith. Journalist,' blurted Sarah.

'Davey, Davey, man, d'you think these two are all tickety-boo?' asked the driver, in a broad Newcastle accent. 'All alone in the middle of the desert, like.'

Davey scratched his matted hair and looked backwards over his shoulder. The distant brown line on the horizon had become a pronounced darkened smear.

'We haven't got time to stand around and argue. Get in the back, you two. We're taking you to Mersa Martuba.'

The rifle didn't exactly point at either Sarah or the Doctor, but it did emphasise his speech. The Doctor climbed into the rear of the truck, sitting on several dusty wooden crates that had been stacked there. He helped Sarah in and even offered a helping hand to Davey, who ignored it.

'Step on it, Tam. That storm's not hanging about,' he called, sitting by the tailgate and indicating the Doctor with a nod of the head.

'How'd you get out here, in the middle of nowhere, eh?'

The Doctor gave a sad smile.

'Our transport was destroyed. Bombed.'

Davey looked at Sarah for confirmation.

'That's right,' she said, not bothering to go into details about exactly what the "transport" amounted to. 'An aircraft attacked us. We were lucky to get away alive. And that you came along.'

'Oh, aye,' replied Davey. 'It was your signal we spotted. The haze stopped us seeing you. This plane, did it have a blue shield on the side?'

Sarah nodded.

'Chevrons, with lions rampant,' added the Doctor.

Davey swore.

'Hey, Tam! That bugger the Count is back again. These two were shot up by him,' he shouted to the driver, who merely grunted in reply.

'I wonder, could you tell me the date?' asked the Doctor suddenly, in a serious tone. Davey's response was to look suspiciously at him, then lean closer to Sarah.

'Looks like your mate's got a touch of sunstroke, miss,' he stage-whispered. The Doctor favoured him with a radiant smile.

'How d – oh – er, yes, he does seem a bit, ah, distracted,' said Sarah, initially indignant and then realising that a heat-stricken Doctor would be much easier to explain away. She caught her companion's eye, and noticed a twinkle there; clearly he agreed.

The small truck bowled along across the desert floor, frantically outracing the oncoming storm, both heading for Mersa Martuba.

**4) The Sinews of War –**

To everything there is a season, said Captain Dobie to himself. Ecclesiates, however, did not provide guidance and advice on mysterious and suspicious strangers.

The Captain heaved a dramatic sigh. He looked at the framed photograph of his wife on the grimy desktop, hoped that all was well at home, unconsciously rubbed his sternum and looked at the – call them "detainees" – who stood in front of him.

Corporal Mickleborough had marched the two suspects into the sandbagged mud shack and stated that they had been found out in the desert, alone, sir, with no water or transport, sir, and might they be spies, sir?

The Captain looked at his paperwork with fond appreciation. Why, only four months ago he'd been happily doing paperwork for 4th Corps around Brighton, tabulating march columns. Now he was out in the hideous trackless wastes of North Africa, baking his brains out, likely to be killed at any moment, and now he had to deal with – with –

'Who are you people, exactly?' he asked, fiddling with his moustache. 'No transport, no paperwork, no documents. You could be spies.'

Not that he really believed that. A spy would try to blend in with their background, not stand out like a circus act.

'Our transport was destroyed, bombed. Nothing left. That's why we were out in the middle of the desert,' answered the rather attractive female detainee. Her brunette curls bounced appealingly in front of the captain, who swallowed abruptly, remembered his wife and thought of England.

The gangling male detainee, still wearing a long coat, gave the captain a broad smile. Captain Dobie wasn't fooled; the curly-haired chap had summoned Corporal Mickleborough from across the desert sands by using a vertical flag. He didn't seem dehydrated, or properly suffering from the symptoms of sunstroke. Odd, perhaps, but not mad.

'Quite why the War Office would give a pair of civilians permission to travel into a war zone escapes me.'

He looked at them dispassionately before abruptly exclaiming.

'Good Lord! You're not here for that blithering idiot Templeman, are you!' he grated, his moustache twitching in righteous indignation.

'Ah, Professor Templeman-Schwartz,' said the Doctor in a cunningly-calculated ambiguous tone of voice that could have been either statement or question.

Sarah watched the Captain's face flush in anger. He called Corporal Mickleborough into the sultry office and pointed to the two detainees.

'Take these two and deliver them to Lieutenant Llewellyn. And be quick about it, the storm is nearly here,' he added, looking outside. Once the distracting pair were out of his sight, he calmed down a little, picked up his fountain pen and began annotating his list of salvaged supplies. Silently he cursed that buffoon Templeman, the War Office, Templeman's political connections that allowed him to return out here and little lost sheep in the middle of nowehere.

Corporal Tam Mickleborough escorted the detainees outside, into a silent, baking heat under a brassy sky, the precursor to the approaching sandstorm, which now towered a hundred feet high and only a few hundred yards away.

'Double time!' he called, and led the two across the sands, past crates, boxes and pallets, to a large khaki tent pitched in the lee of giant stack of crates. Eddies of dust and sand began to whip around their ankles.

'Sir – Captain Dobie's ordered that you look after these two. Mates of the Professor,' called the corporal from outside the tent, then sped off to find his own tent.

The tent flap opened and Lieutenant Llewellyn peered out, his peaked cap failing to sit properly on his tousled hair.

'Good Lord!' he exclaimed. 'Civlians?' He cocked his head as the wind began to pick up. 'In here, smartish, chaps – oh!'

Obviously he suddenly recognised Sarah's gender. Once they were safely inside, he hastily tied the tent flap shut.

Sarah cast a sharp eye over the tent, aware before looking of the smell of sweat, soap and tea. The horizontal tentpole brushed the top of the Doctor's hair, reminding her that she still carried his hat.

'I beg my pardon,' said the officer, wearing wrinkled shorts and a khaki shirt open to the navel. He buttoned up the shirt, then put on a pair of incredibly battered sandals. 'There, decent. Now, introductions are in order. You are?'

'I am Doctor John Smith, and this is my travelling companion, Miss Sarah Jane Smith,' intoned the Time Lord, his eyes taking in everything in the tent within the space of a second.

'Lieutenant Roger Llewellyn, Royal Army Service Corps. Well, Doctor, if you and your –' and the lieutenant hesitated fractionally before saying "daughter" or even "wife" – 'companion would care to take a seat? It's not Groppi's or Shepheards, I'm afraid, but it's the best you've got. We won't be moving from here until the storm blows out.'

Sarah perched herself on the edge of a folding canvas chair, having to move a volume of Wordsworth first. The Doctor remained standing, looking keenly at the officer.

'And you know the Professor?' asked Llewellyn, busying himself with a small primus stove. He fished out a set of chipped enamel mugs from underneath his camp bed.

'Ah, yes, Professor Templeman-Schwartz. Author of "Missing Cultures of the Pre-Pharaonic Era",' declaimed the Doctor, in full Shakespearean mode, performing to the tentpole.

'How do you know that!' exclaimed Llewellyn, his head turning rapidly in surprise. 'He hasn't even completed the manuscript yet!'

The Doctor merely gave a toothy grin, one that an observer could interpret in many ways, usually the one they most wanted to interpret.

'Oho, out from Oxford as well, eh,' murmured the officer, focussing on the tea-making ritual. Satisfied that the blackened petrol-tin base serving as a boiler was positioned correctly, he stood up and wagged a finger at the intruding pair.

'The Professor dropped the "Schwartz" part of his name when the war broke out. Didn't think it very apt to be carrying a German surname, especially not given his religion.'

The Doctor gave a rueful sigh.

'Sorry. We have been a little out of time, not quite in touch with events.'

'Is he Jewish?' asked Sarah, her journalistic sense kicking in at the possibility of a human-interest angle.

Llewellyn coughed in embarassment.

'Well only in the sense that his parents were Jewish. He once described the Bible as a – how does it go? -'

' "A collection of piffle wrapped in waffle"!' interrupted the Doctor, proud of having recollected the quote.

'Er – quite. Frankly I'm amazed he bothered to change his surname, because that implied he noticed what was going on in the outside world. The Professor, Miss Smith, is not very worldly.'

Casting a knowing eye at her time-travelling mentor, Sarah nodded wisely.

A companionable silence settled in the tent, in stark contrast to the whooping desert winds outside. Under their impact the tent walls bulged and swayed, sending rills of dust over the floor. Finally, the lieutenant judged his hot water to be hot enough, as steam rose to make a temporary sauna of the tent. He carefully measured out sugar and condensed milk into three of the worn mugs, then poured the boiling water into a decrepit tin teapot. Letting it steep for several minutes longer, he poured liquor into the mugs and offered them to his guests.

Taking the pint mug gingerly, Sarah sniffed and detected a faint odour of chlorine.

No! Not for her. She would gratefully decline when the Doctor refused his mug, too. She turned to look and saw – treachery! – that her companion was eagerly gulping down the witche's brew. With considerable misgiving, she sipped delicately at the muddy concoction, which in fact tasted more like hot ice cream than tea. Losing her disdain, she latched onto the mug and emptied it in minutes, much to the amusement of the Doctor.

'A valuable source of energy, thanks to the sugar, not to mention various proteins and vitamins, thanks to the condensed milk, and in a form that renders highly-chlorinated water potable, when water is at a premium,' he lectured her.

'It's not long-leaf hand-picked Oolong, Miss Smith,' apologised Llewellyn.

'Never you mind!' boomed the Doctor. 'The tea harvest of India guarantees high morale in the Eighth Army!'

Sarah and Roger looked at each other with mutual embarassment at this over-the-top performance, and hence began a process of mutual bonding, which would enhance interaction, fact-finding and general exploration, all of which the Doctor had calculated for in mere seconds. What he wanted to discover was the reason those interfering buffoons on Gallifrey had sent him here. "Here" seemed to be the middle of a desert wilderness, with nothing particularly threatening in terms of malachronism or temporal toxicity. True, large forces of armed _homo sapiens_ were doing their level best to kill each other; which was nothing new and it couldn't be the reason he and Sarah were diverted here.

'What's the "Army Royal Servicers Core"?' asked Sarah with an air of apparent genuine interest. The genuine interest was actually genuine interest, her not having ever come across the term before.

Llewellyn finished his own mug of tea.

'Ah, therein lies a tail. The RASC delivers supplies to the army in the field.' Seeing the disappointment on his listener's face, he carried on to enlarge on his statement. 'This is North Africa, Miss Smith. There's nothing out here but the desert. Everything we need has to be brought in from overseas. Not just men and their equipment but basic things like food and water.'

The Doctor mentally underlined the officer's phrase; there was nothing out here that the Time Lords would want inspected or investigated. Nothing!

Sarah nodded encouragingly, feeling like a reporter egging-on a source for vital information. The officer continued.

'There's no trees, so you can't burn wood for fuel or chop them down for building anything. There's no livestock or cultivated land or even wild berries growing. No towns or cities where you could buy supplies. Just desert. So anything we do out here depends on supplies. And the RASC delivers the supplies.'

Privately, Sarah considered anyone who wanted to fight here to be irredeemably insane. Merely existing seemed difficult enough.

Casting his eyes about the stifling tent interior, the Doctor noticed a newspaper, it's pulp yellowed by sunshine. He pounced on it avidly, reading the date aloud.

"March the First, nineteen forty one.' The main cover photograph showed acres of bombed-out houses, with a caption about "Nazi bombers strike Portsmouth; heavy casualties feared". 'British Expeditionary Force arrives in Greece,' he read again. 'Italians retreating in Eritrea.' That explained why poor old K9 had been immobilised in the TARDIS – you couldn't have an advanced artefact like him wandering about in the 1940's.

Once again, nothing in the headlines or bylines hinting at why they had been diverted. Gradually the Doctor became aware of Llewellyn chatting to Sarah.

' – yes, I travelled into Libya with Bagnold once, down to the sand sea. Most of my time was with the Professor in Egypt, but I was actually out here in Libya before the war broke out. Before Italy declared war, I should say.'

'Italian-occupied Libya?' asked the Doctor, suddenly interested. 'How did you manage that?'

'Oh, it's a long story,' said Roger dismissively. 'In fact the dig we were at isn't far from here. Makan Al-Jinni.'

A hard glitter steeled the Doctor's stare. Unless his intuition and Arabic were wrong, he might have very well discovered why they'd been diverted here in those last three words.

'We're not going anywhere, Lieutenant. And I would like to hear your story.'

'Go on then,' said Roger, a little amused and impressed that anyone wanted to hear about his archaeological adventures. He sat on his camp bed and produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes from a shirt pocket, lighting up.

The story, as he had told them, was complicated. Archaeologists from the University of Ravenna had wanted access to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Since the Fascist Italian withdrawal from the League of Nations, not to mention involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Britain had not seen fit to allow any Italian presence on Egyptian soil. Dead end. Until an aerial photograph taken by Count Emiliano Ricardo of a site in the borderlands of the Saharan sand sea came to Professor Templeman's attention. The photograph merely showed two small black structures protruding above the desert sands.

Inspired by this, the Professor had contacted the University of Lyons and Ravenna, then pestered the British government, and the Egyptian government and Department of Antiquities. His incessant nagging got a result: the British government would allow the Egyptian government to allow Italian archaeologists onto it's territory, to study in the Nile valley. In return the British and French would be allowed to send reciprocal teams to sites in Italian-occupied Libya. The majority of the British and French expedition members went to Leptis Magna; under the aegis of Professor Templeman, a smaller contingent went to the mysterious site at Makan Al-Jinni. Things proceeded slowly, with a lack of hired labour and mysterious disappearances. Then, out of nowhere, the war in Europe suddenly intruded when Italy declared war on France and Great Britain. Roger and the Professor were arrested and imprisoned.

'How can you be here, now, then!' blurted Sarah

'Likewise Professor Templeman,' added the Doctor.

Roger gave a peculiar half-smile.

'Remember those Italians in Egypt? Well, they got arrested too. After a few months we got exchanged for them in Geneva under the care of the Red Cross, which didn't go down well with a few of them.'

Predictably, Sarah rose to the conversational bait.

'Why not! Don't say they didn't want to go home!'

Roger looked at her coolly.

'Miss Smith, I happen to have known Grigorio Baltasar for many years. He lived in Cairo. He stayed there because he hated Mussolini. He spoke better English than most of my soldiers. He wore a Military Medal given to him by General Plumer for his conduct in fighting the Germans in the Great War. He, for one, did not want to go back to Italy!'

Sarah silently gave up on trying to keep track of this war. All she knew of the campaign in North Africa was what her uncles had told her – El Alamein, Rommel and General Bermard Law Montgomery. For a second her eye caught the Doctor's, expressive of intense interest, and she became aware that he didn't feel remotely dismissive of Lieutenant Llewellyn's story.

'Oh, I say, I am sorry,' apologised the young officer. 'Tempers get a bit stretched in the khamseen, you know. Plus we're short-handed. Very short-handed, if the truth be told.' He poked around in the fusty gloom underneath his camp bed, appearing with a bottle of whisky, which he discarded.

'Not suitable for ladies,' he muttered. 'Where's it gone? Damn it, I did have a bottle of crème de menthe somewhere. Gone the way of the labourers, I dare say – aha!' and he brandished a bottle of green liquid aloft with an air of triumph.

Given his delight at finding the bottle, Sarah suffered herself to be poured a glass of the cloying mint liqueur. Personally she detested the stuff, fit only for maiden aunts and hoi-polloi dinner parties, but if it kept their contemporary chrono-contact sweet …

'What was that about the labourers?' asked the Doctor, looking at the cover of another magazine intently.

'Eh? Oh, sorry, would you like a glass? No? The labourers. What was I saying – oh, yes. It's just that we couldn't hire any locals for work at the dig back in 1940. The Bedu and Tuareg wouldn't go near the site, claimed it was haunted or cursed or both. We did get a couple of workers from Benghazi, a right couple of neer-do-wells, doubtless in trouble with the Italian administration. The University of Ravenna chaps were delighted that the Professor and I brought along half a dozen sturdy Egyptian fellows and their overseer.'

For a moment the only sound was that of the storm outside as the officer sipped on a glass of green liqueur.

'Not for long. Every so often one of the labourers would vanish. We finally ended up with only the overseer. Never a trace of the missing men, no food gone, no water, no artefacts. Nothing.'

Llewellyn's face twisted in a rictus when he pronounced the word "artefacts", a connection not lost on the Doctor.

'Surely you must have found _something_?' he prompted, reading between the lines.

'No, we never did. No artefacts at all. The Professor was convinced our missing labourers went absent with hidden finds, stolen so they could sell them.'

'But you didn't?' asked Sarah, feeling bold in putting the question.

'I didn't,' agreed Roger, slowly. 'Because we simply didn't find any artefacts anywhere on the whole dig. Barring the buildings, there wasn't any trace of human presence anywhere.' He fixed Sarah with a look that dared her to object. 'D'you know how impossible that is?'

'Yes,' replied the Doctor, now feeling more convinced than ever that he'd come across the reason they had been switched here, intead of being allowed to get to Mars in the early twenty-third century. 'The storm is passing,' he added.

The officer stopped to listen, cocking his head to one side. His expression brightened.

'I think you're right, old chap. That's better. Now, did Corporal Mickleborough say you'd been to see Captain Dobie already?'

'Oh yes, we've already seen the Captain. He wasn't exactly happy to see us,' said Sarah.

'Ah, no, perhaps he wouldn't. Worrying about his family back home. The Blitz, you know,' said the officer, looking for matches. 'Plus the disappearances. Funny. Similar thing happened last year to the labourers.'

Once again the Doctor felt the hair-twitching of a hunch being proven correct.

'Is there any chance of being able to get out to your old dig site, Lieutenant?' he asked, casually. Not casually enough to fool Sarah, who recognised the signs of her mentor being on the prowl for information.

'Out to Makan Al-Jinni? Not a great deal,' replied Llewellyn, untying the tent flaps and carefully lifing them to look outside. A gust of dry air and sand blew into the tent around their knees, flushing out the sweaty, humid interior.

'We need to get out to that site, Sarah,' whispered the Doctor. Sarah's reply came in the form of a furrowed brow as Lieutenant Llewellyn strode outside and began tying the tent flaps open.

' "Makan Al-Jinni",' continued the Doctor almost inaudibly. 'It means "The Place of Demons".'


	3. Chapter 3

**5: Adrift in the Sand**

Once Lieutenant Llewellyn departed the stuffy, smelly tent, his involuntary guests followed. Sarah drew in a great lungful of dry air, grateful to escape the oppressive fug of the tent.

'Sorry,' apologised the young officer. 'I sit in my own reek so long I don't notice it. Not enough water for washing, you see. If we were on the coast like First Platoon then there'd be the Med, just the thing for a spot of sluicing yourself clean.'

'Oh, don't worry,' reassured Sarah. 'I'm used to roughing-it, believe you me.' True. She'd been to environments so hostile and deadly that the young officer would have considered them flights of raving fantasy.

'Stout gel!' he praised her. Then, stepping in closer. 'Is your chappy all right in the head? Sunstroke can take people funny ways, you know.'

The Doctor had stopped to stare at the sky, now a cloudless blue again, from where the sun hit them with a near-physical force. He produced a small electronic gadget from a pocket, extended an aerial and spun around to face all directions of the compass. A slow frown spread across his features and he pivoted back to face south-east, looking alternately at his device and the far distant dunes of the Saharan sand sea.

'He's always like this,' murmured Sarah. 'Except when he's worse.' She felt a little embarassed by her companion's behaviour, blatantly over the top as it was.

'Worse? Good grief, he seems like Tod Slaughter already. Just about to start chewing the carpet!' snorted the officer. Sarah nodded and smiled, not getting the reference to Tod Slaughter.

The Doctor, who had caught the unflattering reference to the ham silent actor, smiled to himself. Let the unwary underestimate the unrevealed.

'I take it your dig at Makan Al-Jinni is to the south-east? About ten miles?' he asked. Lieutenant Llewellyn did a double-take.

'Good Lord, absolutely correct, Doctor Smith! How did you know?'

'Significant energy drain.' There was no further explanation. 'I notice you also lack one of the essentials of desert life.'

Sarah turned to look around her. Water? Trees? Nice deep cool swimming pools? Roger merely scratched his dirty hair.

'Flies,' continued the Doctor.

'Oh, yes, that's true,' agreed the young officer. 'Not here, nor at the dig. Professor Templeman says we're too far from any breeding source for flies to reach us.'

The Professor was wrong, and badly so. The Doctor knew it, even if proving it would be harder.

'I wonder, could we prevail upon you to guide us around this garrison?' he asked, all bumbling charm.

Taken aback temporarily, the officer scratched sand out of his tousled hair and looked around in contemplation.

The tour lasted for fifteen minutes, and gave Sarah a slight headache in trying to cope with the sun, the light, the dust and the interminable piles of supplies. She felt simultaneously flattered and worried by the interest expressed in her by the soldiers they encountered, being the subject of a few wolf-whistles until Lieutenant Llewellyn glared at the offenders.

Mersa Martuba, it transpired, had been established in early January 1941 as a potential Forward Supply Depot, at a small oasis where a dozen abandoned mud huts stood. Huge amounts of logistics would have been dropped there to sustain the Western Desert Force as it over-ran the Italian colony of western Libya. Units of the RASC and the RE had already begun to salvage abandoned or captured Italian equipment and stockpile it at Mersa Martuba alongside supplies labouriously hauled up from the Nile Delta. Petrol, oil, diesel, lubricants, water, ammunition, spare parts, tinned food, signal wire and a thousand other things were sent to Mersa Martuba.

That was, until the Italian invasion of Greece, which had turned into a Greek invasion of Italian Albania, threatened to bring a German intervention in turn. Many units of the successful Western Desert Force were sent to Greece, which meant a weakening of the forces left in Cyrenaica. Mersa Martuba's garrison was split into three, with one platoon boarding ships bound for Greece, another remaining at Benghazi to try and make sense of the logistical muddle there, and the remainder sitting amidst the desert at Mersa Martuba, twiddling it's thumbs.

It's still a big site, acknowledged Sarah, looking impressed at piles of crates stacked high as houses, stencilled with strange military jargon, or even Italian. Pyramidal stacks of petrol drums were covered with camouflage netting, as were a dozen trucks, in case of air attack.

The various stacks of supplies were laid out in a checkerboard pattern, divided up into four quadrants of the compass and numbered within that area.

'I've no idea what some of this stuff actually is,' confessed their guide. 'The Italian kit especially. We captured and recovered their supplies all the way along the coast road and some ended up here. Plus, there's a small town on the coast called Mursa Murtaba, and some of their crates have ended up here by mistake and vice-versa.' He pointed to one collection of stout cardboard boxes piled a dozen high and four deep. 'Black berets, six thousand, nine hundred and twelve of them. Heaven knows who sent them out here and why!'

'No sign of a large blue crate, I suppose, one that happens to look like a police box?' enquired the Doctor hopefully. Roger looked puzzled.

'No, we certainly don't have anything like that here, Doctor Smith.'

'Oh, well. Just a pious hope.'

Once again Roger directed a searching look at Sarah, who rolled her eyes.

The Doctor appeared to be noseying at the contents of stacked crates containing hundreds of red tins full of petrol. In actuality he was plotting how to get out to that archaeological site, where a distinct energy anomaly existed. Judging by the telemetry, a significant drop in overall temperature happened to be taking place at the site's location, over an area – a bit of a guesstimate here – of three square miles. Not a natural phenomena, and too much a coincidence not to be connected to the dig. In fact, given the present date, he didn't think human technology could manage the heat-sink effect being generated.

Oh yes. That dig had to be the place the Time Lords aimed him at.

Sarah and Roger were chatting inconsequentially, Sarah trying to nod and laugh in the right places, which was difficult when she failed to understand Roger's army slang and discussion of popular culture.

'Seeing that sandstorm coming across the desert at us – ugh, that was horrid. Like a dirty brown wave,' she said, trying to change the subject.

Roger looked south-east, where the distant traces of the storm could still be seen.

'They're not pleasant, desert sandstorms, Sarah – I say, I can call you Sarah, can't I? – sorry for being a bit forward. Not pleasant but they don't kill you, unless you encounter them in an aeroplane. I heard some of the chaps saying that these storms are artificial ones, whipped up by all the military activity out here.'

'That's rather odd.'

Roger tapped the side of his nose.

'I've seen odder. At the old dig, for example. There used to be strange lights in the night sky over the buildings on occasion, and when it got really hot you'd see Saint Elmo's Fire on the top of the pylons. Quite eerie, I felt. The Prof – who has a stone for a soul – used it to read by. It scared the wits out of the Egyptians and the French chaps didn't like it much, either.'

'But you were made of stronger stuff!' joked Sarah. Roger gave a lop-sided grin.

'Hardly. I just didn't dare to act worried in front of the Prof – yes?' he replied shortly, to a panting and sweaty soldier wearing only shorts, boots and a helmet.

'Beg pardon, sir, but that Doctor Smith character's gone off in one of the trucks. I thought you ought to know.'

Both Roger and Sarah looked startled.

'What! He's gone off and left me!' exclaimed an aggrieved Sarah.

'Stolen a truck!' said Roger, wondering with a touch of horror what Captain Dobie would say. Doubling between the symmetrical maze of stores, he got to the nothern perimeter and looked out across the desert sands.

No sign of a vehicle's dust wake there. Roger ducked back into the supplies, found a robust stack of crates and climbed to the top, suffering several splinters in his haste.

There it was, a trail of dust thrown into the air by a speeding truck, heading – south-east. Towards the dig at Makan Al-Jinni.

'Hey – I found this stuck to the next truck,' panted Sarah, clambering up next to Roger. She handed him a small yellow square of paper.

"Didn't want to disturb, borrowed truck, gone to dig, back by dark" had been hastily scribbled in pencil on the paper.

'Great,' said Roger bitterly. 'Your "companion" holds my future in his hands, Miss Smith.'

Whatever happened to "Sarah"! wondered Sarah.

Whistling gaily, the Doctor sped across the flat rock surface, clutching the steering wheel of a "borrowed" Chevrolet 3 tonner and grinding the clutch ferociously when he shifted gears. Sarah and the young officer were getting on famously, and she'd doubtless pick up all sorts of useful information in passing. Hardly worth bothering them.

Besides, the mention of missing people, of "disappearances", bothered him. Why would labourers on a dig vanish into nowhere without being paid? Why would soldiers vanish in similar fashion? Out here there was nowhere to hide or run to. A soldier might desert to the fleshpots of Cairo or Alexandria if he were near. Out here there was no such reason.

Vanishing people. An unidentified energy drain. No flies. A place with the reputation of being haunted. What connected them? For the Time Lords to divert him here, it had to be significant and threatening.

After at least nine miles, the truck began to encounter drifts of soft sand, makiing progress at a slightly reduced rate. This would be the beginning of the Saharan sand sea, realised the Doctor. Easy to bog the vehicle down in conditions like that, and extricating it would be a long and difficult job for one man.

Deciding that caution surmounted speed, he brought the truck to a stop and climbed down, catching sight of a small dark shape in the heat haze to the south-east. The shape resolved into a crescent of a dozen pitched tents, which rippled in the heat as he approached.

'Hello! Hello there!' he called, without provoking a response. Tent flaps moved listlessly, whirls and eddies of dust moved between the fabrics, but nobody replied.

'The cupboard was bare,' muttered the Doctor to himself. He stood in front of the tents, noticing signs of recent activity; footprints in the sand, bread and a tube of liquid cheese lying on a table, boxes of photographic plates.

At the dig? wondered the Time Lord. He could see the well-worn track over the dunes and followed it.

His first impression on seeing the excavated site of Makan Al-Jinni was one of _alien-ness_. From his vantage point on the rim of the great sand bowl the complex sat in, he could see right to the other side, an uninterrupted vista of black, satiny, massive structures. The nearest was a variety of simplified Acropolis, standing around eighty feet tall. Beyond that lay a gigantic circular plinth, surmounted by two pylons that must have been a hundred feet in height, tapering to narrow points. Other structures lay at varying distances from the plinth: a curved and completely enclosed structure with a slab of the black substance blocking off each end; a row of cubic structures, each the size of a house at one of the cardinal points; the stub of another pylon, thinner than the two on the plinth, and the rest of the pylon, lying shattered on the ground for two hundred feet; curiously humped domes at the far edge of the complex.

The material looked pristine, as if hewn from polished basalt only yesterday.

These structures are not human! How can they not realise! wondered the Doctor, before answering his own question; these humans had no concept of, or contact with, intelligent extra-terrestrial life (barring himself).

Down amongst the buildings, a trio of figures moved. One caught sight of the new arrival and stopped, to point.

The Doctor jogged at an easy pace down the inner side of the sand basin, striding up to the three archaeologists standing bemused next to a canvas shelter.

'Hello! How do you do! I'm the Doctor! You must be Professor Templeman?' he guessed, of a large, bearded man clad in faded linens. A suspicious gleam sprang into the large man's eyes, and the Doctor's proffered hand was ignored.

'I am Professor Templeman. However, nobody here is sick. A doctor was not requested.'

The man in the middle, a gangling, freckled redhead, suddenly produced a revolver and pointed it directly at the Doctor's forehead.

'An Italian spy!' he said, sounding immensely pleased with himself. The third man, who resembled an amiable pudding, rolled his eyes in exasperation and hit the redhead on the foot with a spade.

'Idiot!' he spat, with a pronounced French accent. 'Put down the gun.' He bowed to the Doctor.

'Professor Borguebus. The hasty gentleman here is our idiot assistant, whom the Captain Dobbey saw fit to give a gun to. Albert, a spy does not walk up to those he spies upon.'

Gratified at encountering a civil face, the Doctor nodded enthusiastically.

'I happened to get diverted to Mersa Martuba – transport difficulties – and heard about your excavation from Lieutenant Llewellyn. He piqued my interest, and here I am.'

Professor Templeman's brows drew together, in much the same way a storm cloud gathered.

'Those wretches in the Army! They arrange to send the boy to the desert because of his experience, and fail to use him – stick him in a supply dump. Not only that, he is only ten miles away from the dig he helped with and yet cannot come here. Outrageous!'

The Professor seemed not to know or care that there was a war on in North West Africa, except where it inconvenienced him. "Not worldly" was a mild understatement.

Very well, play to the Professor's strengths, then.

'I am intrigued by your excavations, Professor. A huge site, hundreds of miles from civilisation, completely covered by sand, which you have managed to uncover – almost single-handed.'

'Oh! Oh, really! Thank you!' gushed the Professor immediately, leading the Doctor to condemn himself for exploiting such an obvious weakness. 'It wasn't easy. After being interned and getting back, I had to appeal to that repellent Dobie for site labour, and he only allowed soldiers to work here when they had nothing else to do.'

A sympathetic nod and tut emerged from the Doctor, who managed to simultaneously dart a knowing sideways look at Albert and Borguebus. Neither of them looked persuaded by his juggling the situation.

'And the architecture of your site – remarkable!' continued the Doctor. 'Refined. Utilitarian. Positively primordial. Truly a missing entry in the Mediterranean's library of cultures.'

Albert and Borguebus swapped glances. Professor Templeman looked around the site, nodding in silent agreement.

'How accurately you state the case. How accurately – oh, I beg my pardon, I didn't ask your name. "Doctor John Smith". Thank you.'

The Professor's bulk turned to face into the site, at the big pseudo-Acropolis.

'We call that "The Temple", for want of a better description. I take it you'd like to see it up close? Done. We'll go over straight away.'

He set off promptly, leading the Doctor, and the other two men, who brought up the rear whilst whispering together.

On nearing the awe-inspiring "Temple", the Doctor noticed that one face had been overlaid with a scaffold of wooden planking, creating steps and risers more suited to human physique. Templeman led the way, up to the central atrium of the huge building. He stood there like a king, arms stretched wide.

'Easily bigger than the Temple of Diana, and the dias is three times the size of the Baalbek Trilithon,' said the Professor. 'And completely intact!'

Yes, pondered the Doctor, not feeling happy about the intactness of the building, which bespoke continual care and repair.

'I don't see any decoration. No heiroglyphics, either. No adornment or embellishment of any kind, in fact,' he pointed out to Templeman. 'So – who did build this "Temple", and why?'

Templeman sagged a little.

'Thereby hangs a tale,' muttered Albert from behind them.

'Actually we know more about who didn't build it,' explained Professor Templeman. 'Not Roman, not Phoenecian not Greek, not Egyptian, not Arabic. The why I can explain more easily – this is a religious complex, dedicated to deities deemed to be larger than life, which is why it was constructed to a larger-than-human scale.'

'No ideas about when?'

Templeman harrumphed in annoyance.

'No, Doctor Smith. Our itinerant labourers made off with any artefacts on-site during my first expedition here. By the time of my return they had, naturally, looted the site. So we have no artefacts that can tell us the date of construction.'

Moving alongside a support pillar, the Doctor carefully placed his hand on the glossy black stone.

'Warm,' he said quietly to himself. Warm despite being permanently in shadow. Odd. No more odd than a site with no remnants of those who built it.

'I shall leave you with Albert,' declared the Professor. 'Professor Bourguebus and I are off to make sketch maps. Please come and see me before you leave, Doctor.'

The gangly red-head had the grace to blush when the Doctor turned to look at him with raised eyebrows.

'Er – sorry about the gun.'

The Doctor raised his eyebrows again, then broke into a disarming smile.

'There are bigger things to worry about than your Webley, Albert.' He slapped the pillar. 'This for one.'

Albert threw his head back to look at the ceiling above, wondering if the Doctor meant the pillar was going to fall over.

'This material. The whole site,' clarified the Doctor. 'Your good Professor is so close to it he cannot see the problem. Cannot or will not. Can you?'

Feeling under pressure, Albert merely nodded. The Doctor leaned closer. Feeling even more pressure, Albert opened his mouth to speak.

'It feels all wrong here, like hidden things are watching you all the time. All the time. And there are the strange lights at night,' he blurted.

The Doctor looked at the strange black material making up the building he stood within. Forensic geology wasn't his field, yet he knew this material wasn't of any terrestrial composition. How had thousands of tons of alien material made their way here?

How, and, more importantly, why?

**6: Jackals of the Desert**

Sarah moodily kicked a pebble around the corner of a mud hut, followed it, and came face-to-muzzle with a gun. A big gun, pointing right at her.

Roger, or Lieutenant Llewellyn, had decided to treat her with some circumspection when the Doctor's borrowed truck had vanished into the dust and distance. Fine, she told herself. An escort wasn't needed, she had two eyes and two ears and an enquiring disposition, she'd get by. For the past two hours she'd been alternately wandering around and sheltering from the sun.

The gun muzzle, large and unwavering, pointed directly at her. Sarah tracked the muzzle backwards, along the barrel, set in a turret, seeing that it belonged to a tank. A dusty, rusty, static, un-manned tank.

'Hello there, Miss!' said a cheerful Tam, banging about in the tank's innards with spanners and a screwdriver.

Recovering from her surprise, Sarah saw that the tank presented a pretty dismal prospect. The tracks had gone, and so had what she would learn to call bogey and drive wheels. A large black hole in the turret alongside the main gun showed where a machine-gun had once been. Great metal flaps over the engine deck were permanently propped upwards, and very little of the engine remained when she peered inside.

Tam reappeared from the depths of the vehicle, clutching a greasy piece of machinery. He gave her an irreverent salute and disappeared off to wherever his residence was.

' "Deucalion",' read Sarah aloud, seeing the tank's name painted in faded white lettering on the hull. Another of the rodent art-forms graced the front mudflaps, and a red-white-red square faded into near-obscurity was on the hull front.

'Ah, _there_ you are,' said a voice behind her. The Doctor, returned from his little jaunt out in the desert. 'Wherever have you been hiding?'

'Doctor!' blurted Sarah gratefully . 'Where have _I_ been hiding? You look to your own counsel, because after stealing that truck – what is it? What's wrong?'

The errant Time Lord beckoned her forward, pressing a finger to his lips.

'I think I've found the reason the Time Lords sent us here. An alien complex of buildings out in the depths of the desert.'

This news stopped Sarah's pending tirade before it began. "Alien buildings" to her always recalled the City of the Exilons, and the terrifying maze within. Or the Martian temple-prison of –

'There you are!' exclaimed Lieutenant Llewellyn, from behind them, equal amounts of anger and relief shading into his voice.

'Pretty obviously, Sarah, it's a cruiser tank, an A13 if I'm not mistaken, from the initial advance of Wavell's Thirty Thousand. Oh, hello Lieutenant! Must have been immobilised here on the cross-desert manouevre to get to Beda Fomm. Now, Lieutenant, I've just been out to your dig in the desert and have some bad news for you.'

Roger stopped, puzzled by the Doctor's background chat to Sarah – which was absolutely correct and surprisingly so for an Oxford don – and even more puzzled by the mention of Makan Al-Jinni.

'I've got some bad news for you, Doctor Smith. Captain Dobie would like to have a more detailed chat with you.'

He resisted any urge to ask what the peculiar academic meant by "bad news". For all of thirty seconds.

'What bad news?'

Being escorted past a pyramid of wooden crates labelled "WO 13d 40mm 2lb AP", the Doctor stopped and leant against the dirty, dusty timbers.

'Why, the so-called Temple complex is actually a collection of construction material that doesn't originate on Earth. It has a purpose as far removed from Professor Templeman's "religious observance" as it's possible to be.'

The young officer stared at the Doctor, shook his head, looked at Sarah and gestured for them to continue moving.

Whatever Captain Dobie might have wanted went by the board within ten seconds. From the west a moving column of dust could be seen, approaching Mersa Martuba across the desert flats. A watching sentry atop an angled ladder projecting from one of the mud huts set to working a hand-cranked siren, which sent a wheezy warning across the depot.

'Get to a trench!' shouted Roger. 'It might be the Eyeties!'

'Who are –' began the Doctor, until Sarah dragged him across a trackway and into a shallow trench, bordered with sandbags. Other soldiers could be heard running, shouting and arming weapons.

' – the Eyeties?' he finished plaintively, crouching down below the parapet.

Lieutenant Llewellyn cursed the fact that he'd left his helmet in his tent, fumbled his Webley revolver from it's holster and prepared to die valiantly.

'The Italians,' explained Sarah. Her uncles had instilled a sense of mocking scorn about "The Eyeties" of desert war lineage. Scorn was harder to come by if they were about to storm your pathetically shallow protection.

Overhead, the wheezy siren sounded again. The Doctor saw Lieutenant Llewellyn straighten up, looking westwards to see exactly who was approaching.

'That's the all-clear,' he explained. 'Must be ours. Who can – oh, no, it's that bloody shower!'

The Doctor's acute vision, and his pocket telescope, enabled him to view the oncoming column of vehicles at a distance of over two miles away.

'Interesting,' he commented. Sarah looked between him and the young officer, who wore a look of resigned exasperation.

'Vickers Mark Six light tank, Bren Carrier, Chevrolet, Sahariana, Ford CMP, Marmon-Harrington. Quite the mechanical menagerie, wouldn't you say?' said the Time Lord, as if reading the running order of a race-course.

Roger was climbing out of the shallow trench, tucking his revolver back into it's holster. Sarah edged closer to the Doctor.

'What on earth are you babbling about!' she hissed. 'It sounds like a list of aliens that UNIT ought to be fighting.'

Within seconds Sarah didn't need to ask questions about the vehicles. They drove into Mersa Martuba at full speed and skidded to gravel-spewing halts, throwing up clouds of dust. Raucous laughter sounded from the crews as they jumped down to stretch their legs. None of them wore standard uniforms, instead being clad in definitely non-military denims, cordurouys, silk scarves, RAF blouses, peaked caps and gas goggles. The only uniform item about them was a chequered scarf tied around the upper left bicep. Several men got down to empty their bladders against the vertical metalwork of the vehicles, only to suffer huge embarrassment when Sarah called out a cheery "Hello!".

'Bugger me! A woman!' called one man, pointing to Sarah.

'Never seen one before, Smalls?' commented a loud voice with a Northern Ireland accent. 'Get your disgusting selves to the latrines, quickly now.' There were no more comments about Sarah's gender. Instead a short, stocky, moustachioed man wearing the insignia of a sergeant emerged from the clouds of dust around the convoy.

'Sorry, Miss. Men a long time without members of the fairer sex,' he said, in a thick Irish brogue. 'Sergeant McSween. If any of the men - ' and he indicated the vehicles with a sweep of the hand ' - give you any trouble, any trouble at all, please tell me.'

'Oh!' replied Sarah. Oh indeed, she realised mentally. As a single woman out in the middle of the desert, in the middle of a war, she was indeed a _rara avis_. 'Right. That's alright, Sergeant. Thank you.'

'Miss,' he replied, saluting her and vanishing back into the hanging clouds of dust. A small gaggle of men could be seen gathering together amidst the vehicles, being covered in slowly-falling dust and pointing to various directions of the compass.

'Who are this lot?' asked Sarah. 'More of your Royal Army Service Corps chums?'

Roger shook his head.

'No, "this lot" are J Force. Variously known as either "Jolyon Force" or "Jackal Force". Whoops, there's Captain Dobie. And Captain Jolyon.'

A straight-faced and obviously unimpressed Captain Dobie came marching up to the group of officers, who were now smoking and swigging from canteens. An officer so covered in dust that he seemed to have been rolled in flour gave a nonchalant salute.

Feeling her journalistic instincts kick in, Sarah edged closer, the better to hear. She turned to nudge the Doctor, only to find that he'd disappeared again in the diversion caused by J Force arriving.

'Captain Jolyon,' said Captain Dobie, in a flat and unexpressive voice. 'What do you want?'

Captain Jolyon seemed not at all put-out by his fellow officer's less-than-friendly expression.

'Well, Captain Dobie, I'd like fuel for the vehicles, a check-over by our fitters, a few spare parts, a resupply of ammo, food and water for my men and our prisoners, ' he answered in a brisk and cheerful tone.

'Prisoners?' asked Captain Dobie, blinking in surprise.

'Thirty-eight of the rascals,' agreed the other officer. 'Caught 'em in one of their canteen roadhouses. We popped-off the officer and a sergeant and the rest were obliging enough to put their hands up.'

The words were said with a lightness of tone that belied their intent. Her flesh crept slightly as Sarah realised "popped-off" meant "killed".

In the middle of the collection of piratical vehicles, a dust-shrouded canvas-backed truck disgorged several dozen soldiers, men in uniforms different to the ones that Sarah was now used to seeing. British soldiers carrying rifles with fixed bayonets escorted the prisoners past Sarah. She looked at them, seeing Mediterranean complexions, neatly-trimmed moustaches, shabby uniforms, worn boots and tired eyes. Most of the prisoners exuded an air of resigned disappointment; most, but not all. Some, feeling that their nationality imposed a responsibility to flirt, winked or whistled at Sarah.

'Shut yer bleedin' cakeholes, you Italian shower!' snapped one of the escorts. 'Sorry, Miss. As you were, as you were, you flippin' Eyetie bleeders, or you'll be sorry.' To make his point, he kicked one of the prisoners in the pants, resulting in an angry tirade of Italian in reply.

The insults were carried out in a manner that said neither party really felt motivated enough to hate the other properly. Sarah rolled her eyes and strode forward.

Isolated, and splendidly so, atop a pyramid of petrol drums, the Doctor looked south-east and rubbed his chin. Passing soldiers looked at him with curiosity.

"The Place of Demons." Why call it so? Because people considered the site haunted. As an ultimately rational empiricist, the Doctor dismissed the supernatural as due cause for the site's reputation.

Disappearances. Mysterious vanishings without trace. Not predicable, nor regular, or there would have been nobody left at the dig. Yet sufficiently noticable for the site to gain a reputation over five thousand years ago, and retain it.

Why, then, would it have the – aha – yes, those twin pylons and their relative spacing.

They were a trans-mat system! A trans-mat system of exceptional size.

The Doctor stood up on the petrol-drum pyramid, feeling a moment of intellectual triumph. A whole series of observations and facts fell abruptly into place.

'Oi! You! Get off them drums – what d'you think you are, a parrot on a perch?' shouted a sergeant from below, having been told of the sun-stricken prof sitting on a stack of fuel drums.

'A very good idea. Do you know where I can find Captain Dobie?' said the Doctor, jumping down from his meditative platform.

'He's busy,' growled the sergeant. 'Go see Lieutenant Llewellyn.'

Which the Doctor did. The young officer with the perpetually awry hair was overseeing delivery of petrol tins to the J Force vehicles, dozens of petrol tins, and several tins of engine oil. Another young officer, wearing a keffiyeh, a uniform blouse and worn cord trousers, looked on in approval.

'Can I have a word?' asked the Doctor, edging up to Roger.

'How about several? "Taking Army property without permission" for a start,' replied Roger shortly, ticking off boxes on his noteboard. He called over the kheffiyeh-wearing officer. 'You need to sign for the boxes of ammo. Two hundred rounds of Vickers fifty-calibre armour-piercing; one thousand rounds of three-oh-three.'

'It's about the disappearances,' added the Doctor. The officer stopped to stare back at him, then returned to his work.

'Any chance of some Boyes rounds?' asked the other officer. 'Captain Jolyon goes through them like nobody's business.'

'I'll see,' replied Roger, then walked away after taking the Doctor's elbow in what he hoped was a painfully hard grip and dragging him along. 'What are you blathering on about, you bloody looney! You steal a truck and go haring off – why should I believe you?'

'I know what's been causing the disappearances,' stated the Doctor simply, his elbow somehow stealing free, and gaining Roger's unwavering attention.

'Line up, line up, you bludgers,' bawled one of the J force non-coms at the prisoners, in a fierce Australian accent. Sarah went down the line, issuing a mess tin and cup to each prisoner, giving them a nod and smile. Some smiled back. Then she stood at the head of the line, ladling out a serving of stew, a slice of bread and pouring a cup of water for each man.

Captain Dobie had been quite happy to let her help J Force, since it meant one less of his men involved with the new arrivals. Sarah could read the disdain on his face like a newspaper headline.

'Grazie,' muttered the battered Italian soldier in front of her, taking his stew and dropping his bread into it.

'Mille grazie, signora,' said the next one, bowing a little. None of them looked dangerous, or hostile, or anything except fed-up. When they had all been fed the fierce-sounding Australian, who sported a sinister scar on his left cheek, belied his appearance by passing round cigarettes amongst the prisoners.

'Keeps them happy,' he said to Sarah, leaning against one of the vehicles, tipping his helmet forward to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Her journalistic instinct kicked in and Sarah took the opportunity to offer stew and bread to the soldier.

'Boffo! Ta, miss.' Silence fell for several seconds whilst the man methodically devoured the food.

'So, what is this "J Force" you're part of?' she prompted, when he was lighting another cigarette.

'Bright idea Captain Jolyon had, miss, him being in the REME. Between him and Sergeant McSween they got hold of a ton of sha – er, disabled MT. "Motor Transport" - trucks, to you, miss. Then they scrounged all the kit they could muster and Captain Jolyon took the whole lot to General Wavell. Got approval for a light raiding force, which is what we are. Swan about behind Eyetie lines and cause them trouble, that's us.'

'What about the Germans?' asked Sarah, wondering where they had gotten to. Her uncles had been pretty insistent about "Jerries".

The Australian shrugged.

'They're only just ashore in Tripoli, miss. We'll give 'em one up the – er, we'll sort 'em out as well, if they get this far.'

'A "trans-mat"?' repeated Roger, his look of disbelief not fading.

'A generic term for the device,' explained the Doctor. 'From "Matter-transmitter". He felt he'd explained things rather well.

'You must be stark, raving mad,' commented Roger. 'And you must think I am, too, to believe that.'

Ah. Perhaps the explanation hadn't been entirely successful.

'Let me try again,' and the Doctor's tone carried something that stopped Roger from moving away in despair. 'The two pylons form the gateway, if you will. Any object placed between those pylons could be sent to the receiving station, instantly. There would be no trace left of the object – say in this case a person from your archaeological dig. Gone entirely, and so fast you wouldn't notice it happen.'

Roger squinted.

'Why didn't everyone disappear, then? We've all passed between those pylons, lots of times.'

The Doctor grinned.

'Because they aren't always active! That site is powered geothermally, you know. I took readings out there, and beneath each structure there will be a long thermostatic spike, drawing energy from the earth. That's why the buildings are never cold. It also explains the energy drain I detected.'

'Geothermal – like hot springs?' commented Roger, getting drawn in despite himself.

'A little. It's a source of energy that never runs out – or at least not while Planet Earth maintains a molten core. Geo-thermal power allows the complex to maintain itself indefinitely, staying in perfect condition. And the pylons, the whole matter-transmission system, requires vast energies to operate. It can't be constantly in commission, so the geo-thermal power is accumulated. Once it reaches peak storage capacity, any soul unlucky to move between the pylons will be transmitted.'

Roger looked at the Doctor in alarm. The mysterious and inexplicable vanishings, the ever-warm buildings, the scale of the site – this grinning lunatic had managed to explain it all away. What was that line from Conan Doyle? "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, remains the truth."

A dusty soldier, clutching his rifle frantically, rushed up to the lieutenant.

'Sir! Sentry says he's spotted three unidentified vehicles heading this way, from the south-west. Says there's something bloody weird about them, sir, begging your pardon.'

'Of course,' said the Doctor slowly. 'I _could_ be mistaken.'


	4. Chapter 4

**7: The Trident**

Roger darted over to the look-out position, a wooden platform built up atop the halest mud building. The sentry on duty there started briefly at the arrival of his officer, before looking back out to the south and the desert depths.

Roger's first inclination was to curse the sentry for alarming him about three trucks, until he dragged a memory from the depths of recollection, a wheelbarrow falling down a slope – back at Makan Al-Jinni when he'd been arrested.

These three widely-spaced objects weren't trucks, they were much too squat for that. Dark, too, and uncamouflaged against the dusty desert floor they stood out in a harsh contrast. Were they on tracks? A caterpillar arrangement supported them, becoming apparent when the trio drew closer.

The more clearly Roger saw them, the less he liked them. At a guess, they stood six feet high, a big opaque cylinder mounted on a broad chassis, which sat upon a pair of tracks. Various appendages projected from the cylinder at differing heights, waving in the wind of passage, and a set of what might be aerials projected from the rim of the upper cylinder.

'Sound the alarm,' he told the sentry.

Down below, the Doctor waited patiently, keeping a weather eye on the nearing vehicles. Lieutenant Llewellyn jumped down off the platform, ready to race back and alert J Force.

'Definitely non-human technology, wouldn't you agree?' said the Doctor mildly, to an incoherent snarled reply from the young officer.

Between Sarah and the Australian soldier, they shooe'd the Italian PoW's back into the truck, none of them wanting to hang around and all looking anxious.

The croupy siren wailed once again over the depot, bringing Captain's Dobie and Jolyon out of the former's mud hut, where he had been arguing over exactly how many supplies J Force could depart with.

'What the devil's going on!' called Dobie to Roger, who had mustered a dozen men of the garrison and was warning them to get ready to take cover.

Roger ran over to his superior, dogged by the Doctor.

'Looks like Italian – well, infernal devices, sir. Like an oil drum on tracks, three of them.'

Dobie spun round to glare at Jolyon, who in turn was looking at the Italian prisoners.

'Have you brought an enemy force out here, Jolyon!' Another thought struck him. 'They're going to try and free the prisoners!'

The Doctor shook his head, which got both officer's attention.

'They aren't Italian, but they may very well be infernal.'

Captain Dobie could see the middle vehicle of the three, as the other two split off and began to skirt the depot. This single middle vehicle drove straight into the depot, slowing down to walking pace and splaying out several "arms" to either side.

' "Aren't Italian!" Don't talk rot – they can't be German, they're still on the docks at Tripoli,' blustered Dobie. Captain Jolyon, paying closer attention to the Doctor, began to edge backwards to his own convoy.

'Stay away from the arms!' shouted the Doctor.

He didn't recognise the architecture, or the design, but plainly these devices were not human, and not contemporary, either. The tracks were more akin to slightly deflated balloons than caterpillar design, and the whole artefact displayed behaviour unpleasantly similar to a stalking predator. Those waving arms seemed hostile, a combination of sensor and claw.

'You men! Get out there and stop that – that thing!' shouted Dobie at a huddle of soldiers in a shallow trench.

Two of the depot soldiers, pointing rifles at the intruder, left the trench and stood squarely in the middle of the roadway.

'Get back –' called the Doctor, before Dobie rounded on him with a clipboard in one hand and a pistol in the other.

Both soldiers aimed as the vehicle slowed in front of them, but before they could fire two of the flailing arms whipped forward and struck them, slicing into flesh and clothing. Instantly the men went rigid, not even managing to scream. A brief display of bright blue light played around the aerial atop the cylinder; whilst it did so the men's bodies visibly shrank and shrivelled within their uniforms, collapsing into boneless heaps on the roadway. Still the attacker's arms remained fimly attached to the bodies, until all that remained of the men were two loose heaps of crumbling clothing, covering matted, stringy, dried husks.

'Good God!' exclaimed Dobie, his eyes bulging in horrified disbelief. Further behind, Captain Jolyon sprinted back to the column of stationary vehicles, waving his arms to alert the lounging soldiers and officers.

A ragged salvo of shots rang out from the soldiers crouched in the trench, their bullets ricocheting from the opaque black monster with no visible effect.

Glass! realised the Doctor, seeing flakes and chips fly off the matte surface under the bullet's impact. A machine composed of fused silicon dioxide. If he could get close enough with the sonic screwdriver then he might be able to shatter the tank-like machine.

Rumbling slowly forwards, the machine lashed out with it's arms and caught another soldier in the trench, once again causing him to shrivel and waste away into rags and papery remnants.

Hmm. Perhaps getting close isn't really viable, realised the Doctor, sorting out possible alternatives that didn't involve dying suddenly.

The surviving soldiers abandoned their trench and ran backwards, loosing off more ineffectual shots. Captain Dobie levelled his Webley and emptied the chambers, gritting his teeth with determination.

'Bulletproof, damn it!' he cursed. 'Fall back! Fall back and watch out for the two on the flanks.'

The various trucks, light tanks, armoured cars and scout vehicles of J Force were now revving their engines and manouvering in the narrow roadway. Captain Jolyon stood up in the lead car, a captured Italian Sahariana, and aimed a Lewis machine gun from the shoulder. He fired over the heads of the soldiers now running towards him, only to see the tracer rounds bounce off the attacker.

Seeing the machine advance again, the Doctor dashed back to the Marmon-Herrington armoured car, an ugly vehicle mounting a Bren gun in the turret, alongside –

'I say, is that a Boyes anti-tank rifle?' he shouted above the din of engine noises.

A startled crewman poked his head above the turret, looked down at the Doctor and then up at the slowly-approaching black machine.

The Doctor stood on the running board to shout more effectively.

'That thing –' and he waved at the intruder, now only thirty yards away, ' – is made of fused glass. A high-velocity round ought to shatter it.'

One of the energy-draining arms whipped out, catching a running soldier across the legs and shrivelling him into near-nothingness.

The crewman ducked down again, the armoured car jerked into reverse and began to accelerate backwards. More rounds from Captain Jolyon's Lewis gun bounced off the glassy-hulled machine. His Sahariana surged forwards and swung hard left, narrowly avoiding being hit by the attacker's swinging arms.

They're not going to bother, after my advice –

With a terrific bang, the long anti-tank rifle fired, kicking up volumes of dust from the engine covers. Turning, the Doctor saw the bullet impact high on the black cylinder. Large-bored and high velocity, the round drilled right into the machine, leaving a small entry hole, then a much larger exit one, scattering chunks of black glass across the road.

Abruptly, the machine stopped. It still functioned, as the deadly arms continued to flail the air. The Doctor felt it had come across a stimuli never encountered before and was taking stock of the situation.

Behing the armoured car, the Vickers light tank edged forward, away from the truck holding Italian PoW's. Of an approximately equal size to that of the sinister alien machine, the tank's turret swivelled to bring twin machine-guns to bear, just as the other machine began to reverse.

These machine guns were fifty calibre Vickers, firing armour-piercing rounds far bigger and more deadly than the depot's rifles. They banged out a stacatto rhythm for three seconds, blowing big holes in the alien machine, ricocheting around the interior and throwing delicate glass debris all over the road. When firing ceased the machine had run backwards into the wall of a mud hut, the cylinder breaking apart and collapsing inwards.

'Cor! We stopped it!' exclaimed the nervous crewman the Doctor had seen, now sticking only his nose and eyes above the turret.

'There are still two more,' cautioned the Time Lord.

Sarah stayed in the lorry with the Italians, crammed in amongst them, standing up to see what on earth was going on. The big black tank had advanced slowly down the roadway, killing several soldiers in the process. Bullets merely bounced off the horrid machine, and she saw the Doctor running back to an armoured car.

The truck driver favoured discretion over valour, reversing the truck into the gap between two piles of net-covered crates, then driving forward across the roadway and into another symmetrical arrangement of boxed supplies, before stopping.

More gunfire sounded from J Force, rising to a crescendo, then abruptly stopping.

'I'm going to see what happened to the Doctor,' called Sarah to the truck driver, who sat fiddling with a sub-machine gun. 'Can I get past?' she asked the Italians, packed in like sardines, standing upright.

With startling suddenness, half a dozen Italian soldiers to Sarah's right froze into immobility. She turned to look at them, too surprised to speak, and caught the silent agony in the face of the nearest man. His eyes went white and then shrivelled to nothing, his cheeks hollowed then fell in, as the skin on his face contracted to become a paperlike tissue stretched over his skull. Which in turn collapsed inwards as his body became little more than cords of stringy tissue unable to hold up his uniform. Barely able to react, Sarah saw the other victims disintegrate also, and behind them the bulk of the evil alien machine loomed.

The whole ghastly process took place in a second, leaving the machine free to attack more victims. One of the arms slashed at Sarah –

- who found herself knocked over the side of the truck in a diving tackle by one of the more alert soldiers. She hit the hard ground hard, getting all the wind knocked out of her.

'Jump! Jump and run for it!' yelled the Australian soldier, suiting action to words and jumping. Alongside Sarah the Italian who had saved her put a steadying arm around her shoulder and helped her to her feet. Stumbling off, she turned to see another half dozen soldiers caught in the truck, bodies collapsing into wasted oblivion. The Australian soldier fired a couple of shots that merely bounced off the armour of their assailant.

It followed us off the roadway, realised Sarah.

Then she heard firing suddenly flare up a couple of hundred yards away to the north. There were more machines lurking among the pyramids of supplies, hunting humans.

The second machine, moving in from the north, proved to be more cunning and calculating than it's destroyed cousin. It remained behind the scattered piles of crates, darting from cover to cover, never exposing itself for long enough to be fired upon. Small, pathetic, ruined bundles of rag in it's path showed where soldiers had been surprised by the machine.

They had to be using a shared intelligence network, so that information acquired by one was passed to all. How to disrupt that! wondered the Doctor.

Slowly, with a crewmember peering cautiously over the turret rim, the Marmon-Herrington armoured car crept around a pile of wooden crates. The Doctor followed the car, careful to keep well to the rear, out of the reach of any lethal arms. He cocked an inquisitive eye at the wooden crates, came to a decision and clambered up them. From the top he spied the glassy black intruder, quarter of a mile away, moving stealthily between cover. Cover arranged like a chess board –

An idea sprang into his mind and the Doctor jumped down onto the rear deck of the Marmon Herrington, nearly killing the crew with fright.

'You need to hold your position here, and aim that Boyes rifle directly north along the open lane between all these supplies. I'm going to arrange a little beating party!' he explained, beaming with the enthusiasm of either a genius or a madman.

Back to the top of the twenty foot high pile, and he spotted what was needed; the Vickers light tank, currently revving like mad and driving up and down the main roadway. Checking the position of the intruder, the Doctor once more sprinted over to the light tank, knocking politely on the small turret. A worried-looking young man wearing a black beret popped up from the hatch like a jack-in-the-box.

'Could you move forward five hundred yards, and point your guns to fire north along one of the lanes in the supply dump? We're going to box the killer in.'

Shrugging, as if to deny any responsibility, the officer sank back into the tank, which headed off to take up position five hundred yards away. The whole of the small armoured vehicle swung to face north.

'Excellent!' chuckled the Doctor. With a tinge of apprehension he saw Captain Jolyon driving another Sahariana, this one mounting a captured Breda cannon.

'Captain,' he gasped after running and catching the car. 'Excuse me – I've set up two of your vehicles to box the killer tank in. You need to drive north along the cleared lane to the left of that armoured car, and have this formidable-looking sidearm pointed east.'

More flexible of mind that Dobie, Captain Jolyon merely nodded and drove carefully around the milling vehicles to get to the Doctor's suggested location. The abrupt dual rattle of the Vickers tank's two machine guns warned that the killer "tank" had tried to move outside the no-go zone. Seconds later the echoing bang of the Boyes told that it had tried to escape on that side. The commander of the light tank was quick enough to realise what had happened, and moved his tank backwards along the roadway, guns once again pointing north along another clear lane between the supplies. The area the alien machine could move in was suddenly reduced.

This boxing-in process took time, which the Doctor chafed at. He knew a third killer machine was loose in Mersa Mertuba, and worried about Sarah. She ought to know to keep well clear of the evil thing. But what if it was stalking her specifically?

'Captain! Captain! Three o'clock!' he yelled, suddenly seeing the black tank move out into the open, it's space for manouevre constricted by now to nothing. Captain Jolyon's Sahariana darted forward and the cannon hammered away with a twenty-round burst. The first few shells missed, but then Jolyon got the range and the target began to fly apart as great dinner-plate sized holes appeared in it, slowing the vehicle to a halt in a pile of shattered silicon dioxide.

'Howzat!' shouted the Doctor, now turning to look for the third machine.

To his alarm it had crossed the roadway and was now slowly circling the supply stack below him, wary soldiery keeping a safe distance from it.

'Oh dear,' he said quietly. 'Shared intelligence network. I've been identified as the greater threat.'

From across the roadway, hiding behind wooden crates, Sarah looked on with horror as the glassy black killer began to circle the Doctor's pyramid. The vile thing had been stalking her, the surviving Italian prisoners and the depot soldiers, until it suddenly stopped before darting across the road. Now it was hunting the Doctor.

The Australian soldier from the lorry, reeking of perspiration, dropped to the ground beside her, levelling his rifle at the black tank, before stopping and swearing in an impressively unrepetetive stream of expletives.

'What's wrong? Why aren't they shooting?' snapped Sarah, aghast that nothing was being done to help her mentor.

'The crates, Miss, the bl – the crates. That's a stack of two pounder ammo in there and if an armour-piercing round hits them it could set the whole bl- set the whole lot off. It'd demolish the camp.'

Sarah stood up and cupped her hands, shouting this information to the Doctor, who waved to show he understood.

'Impasse,' he muttered, wondering where Captain Dobie had vanished to, since he wasn't trying to organise the depot garrison. Surely not killed? A bit of a pompous ass –

Below, the black tank nudged the pile of crates, making it shiver. The machine moved to a corner, hitting the crate with more force, making the Doctor teeter atop the now-threatened pyramid, flailing his arms for balance. One of the alien machine's arms swung dangerously close to him as he wobbled uncertainly. Then the machine drew back for a third rush at the crates, which would surely knock him completely off them.

'Ah, yes,' muttered the Doctor to himself. 'Shared intelligence and innate problem-solving abilities, too.'

**Eight: Pieces, and bits**

Captain Dobie emerged from his mud hut at speed, wearing an expression the Doctor considered best described as "murderous".

I should be concentrating on balancing or escaping, not the CO's temper, he told himself. One mis-step and I'll be so much organic kindling.

'You monster! I'll show you!' bellowed Dobie, pitching a small round object at the black tank. The Doctor frowned at the –

'Hand grenade!' he hissed to himself, practically falling down the pyramid on the opposite side. A terrific percussive bang came from the other side, shortly followed by another. Shrapnel thudded into the wooden crates, and the Doctor witnessed at least two of the killer tank's arms fly apart in the air. Grasping the opportunity, aware of what Sarah had shouted about the contents of the crates, he used his sonic screwdriver to loosen the staples holding a corner together, prised it back, ripped open the tin-foil and pulled out a two-pounder shell. It was the size of a handy club,

He had an idea, and a destination, both inspired from his vantage point on the crates. Dropping down to the ground, he sprinted eastwards, hearing the black tank drive after him, scooting along the sands. A few scattered shots came from soldiers or J Force vehicles, coming far too close to him for comfort, until an authoritative voice bellowed "cease fire!".

Risking a quick glance behind, he saw the black tank only thirty feet behind, the glassy armour scarred and crazed where Captain Dobie's hand grenades had pummelled it. Only two of the arms remained intact.

The Doctor put on a sprint and darted around the corner, leaping for the front hull of the abandoned A13 tank, hauling himself onto the turret by the barrel of the gun and dropping inside through the open hatch. In front of him sat the breech of the two-pounder gun, which he studied for a split second.

Simple technology, no electronics involved, no electricity, only kinetic moving parts – here goes! he thought, mentally crossing fingers.

The two-pounder shell went in smoothly enough, and the breech closed with only a little grating.

A sudden darkness blocked sunlight that had been streaming in through the large gap in the turret next to the two-pounder. The black tank had arrived.

'Say cheese,' muttered the Doctor, pulling what he assumed to be the trigger mechanism, closing his eyes and clenching his teeth together tightly.

His guess was correct. The two-pounder shell was capable of penetrating an inch of armour plate at five hundred yards. At a range of ten feet, against an artefact composed of silicon dioxide, the effects were literally shattering: the black killer blew apart from the tracks upwards in a million shards, a tinkling explosion that deposited black glass fragments over half an acre.

More relieved than he cared to acknowledge, the Doctor slumped backwards in the gunner's tiny seat, exhaling hugely.

After a few seconds a rapping could be heard on the tank's armour.

'Hello? Doctor?' came Sarah's plaintive voice. 'Are you alright?'

The Doctor popped up out of the turret like a jack-in-the-box, startling the young woman.

'Never better!' he grinned at her. 'Don't cut yourself on the remnants of our alien caller.'

The upper surfaces of the tank were indeed liberally covered with shards of black glass, which crunched like crisps underfoot.

Captains Dobie and Jolyon crunched around the mud hut, surprised and pleased that the Doctor had survived.

'Damn plucky, that, Mister Smith,' blustered Captain Dobie, kicking the tracks of the third machine. 'What the hell – oh, beg your pardon, Miss Smith – er, what on earth is this thing? Some Italian infernal engine?'

' "On Earth" isn't the right phrase, Captain,' remarked the Doctor, drily.

'It isn't Italian!' interrupted Sarah with some heat. 'It killed fifteen or sixteen of the prisoners.'

Poking around in the shattered track section, Captain Jolyon whipped his finger back, swore briefly and sucked it.

'Cut my finger,' he muttered. 'Damn thing's sharp as a razor.'

'Fused silicon dioxide, Captain,' explained the Doctor. 'Glass, in other words. Must be making use of local resources,' he continued in an undertone.

When the sad, pathetic bundles of rag that constituted the dead were tallied, it was found that nineteen of the Italian PoW's had been killed, along with nine soldiers of the depot garrison. All that remained to identify the deceased were their identity tags. J Force remained long enough to help dig two communal graves, one for the Italians, one for the British, and fired three rounds over the freshly dug earth.

'No idea what to tell Middle Eastern Command about this, old feller,' said Captain Jolyon briskly as the convoy of vehicles moved off down the roadway from Mersa Martuba.

'RASC Headquarters will send me to see an alienist if I tell them the truth,' grumbled Captain Dobie. He had called the Doctor, Lieutenant Lewellyn and Corporal Mickleborough into his office. Sarah, uninvited, hung around the door until frowned away by the captain.

'The truth is more alarming than you think, Captain, because the threat is not over.'

Nobody wanted to hear news like that from the Doctor. Captain Dobie scowled at him, then went back to tidying up his desk drawers, which he had wrenched open and emptied in order to find the two hand grenades left there for emergencies.

'I beg to differ, Doctor Smith. We shot and blew those things into bits. We haven't seen any more because there aren't any more.'

Roger directed a cutting look at the Doctor.

'Trans-mat indeed! I know what happened to our missing soldiers. And the workers at Makan Al-Jinni, if it comes to that. All those monstrous things leave behind them are a bundle of dry tissues, and the wind would soon disperse or conceal them. No trace of anyone remaining after a few minutes.'

The Doctor conceded the point with a languid wave of the arm.

'Yes, I happened to be theorising without sufficient data,' he admitted, 'But my point about that plinth being a trans-mat is still correct.' He gave a rueful grin, then straightened up suddenly. 'D'you suppose Professor Templeman is still alive and whole?'

Captain Dobie looked startled.

'Good Lord, you know, I'd forgotten all about the interfering old duffer. Someone ought to go and see.'

All eyes turned upon the Doctor.

'We're going to be struggling here, with nine men less and all the work still to be done,' explained Captain Dobie.

'Ah. Well, I suppose I do rather fit the bill.'

Privately, the Doctor wanted to get over to the dig and see what had transpired there, and he wanted to do it without risking anyone else's life. Those glass vehicles would also bear examination. Clearly their construction out of silicon dioxide meant that they'd been built using what was available locally. Then there had been the peculiar blue nimbus of light that played around the circular antennae arrays every time the machines killed a man. What was the purpose of that?

Before leaving he tried one last gambit.

'Those machines were built with a purpose in mind, Captain. There is a rational intelligence operating behind them, and I urge you to exercise caution.'

Captain Dobie smiled pityingly and handed over a set of ignition keys for a Chevrolet 3 tonner.

Making his way to the ranks of parked trucks under their shady camouflage netting, the Doctor decided on a small detour and checked out the carcass of the first black tank to be destroyed. Solid glass outer casing, arrays of delicate spokes, wheels and levers inside, all made from the same black glass, and a smashed centrally-located metal box that must have been the vehicle's electronic brain. All the internal components were unseated or smashed, telling him little he couldn't already deduce. The machine wasn't a design he recognised.

'Which doesn't mean a great deal,' he sighed to himself. 'Now, to the dig.'

Sarah moodily kicked a stone down the dusty, potholed roadway. The men – make that The Men, she chided them mentally – obviously didn't trust her to do or think or say anything constructive or sensible.

Men! she scornfully sneered. Especially these men – behaving as if she were some spun-sugar princess who might faint if she heard bad language. The Doctor was no better – he'd gone sneaking off and driven away in a lorry before she caught up with him. Lieutenant Llewellyn merely told her the Doctor had gone to see Professor Templeman, before rushing off himself to arrange sentries.

So here she was, on her own. Not even the TARDIS to take refuge in.

On a whim, she clambered up a pile of crates with Italian writing stencilled on the side, trying to spot any sign of the familiar old blue box.

Nothing, in all directions. Heat haze, dust, sand. And the inevitable, irreconcilable sun, beating down. Sarah felt the truth of the verb, the heat here did hit you like a physical force.

She tried to recall what the Doctor had told her about the HADS, and about the TARDIS's ability to manouvre in time and space in a non-linear fashion.

Well, it might turn up tomorrow, or not for three months.

Sarah looked at the landscape more closely. There were dips and hollows, deep cuttings, potholes, depressions – more than enough places to conceal the TARDIS, their mutual escape route. If it had landed out there, then simply standing here and looking wouldn't reveal it. She ought to go out and look herself. Perhaps she ought to inform the Doctor – and then again perhaps not, considering that he wasn't actually at Mersa Martuba to be informed. She couldn't tell any of the garrison why she was really going to go searching in the desert, and no lie that came to mind would be compelling enough to persuade the suspicious soldiery.

Not being stupid or hasty, she went along to Lieutenant Llewellyn's tent, and borrowed an empty water bottle. Borrowed being a long-term verb. She filled it from the handy faucet located on the rear of what looked like a petrol tanker but was actually a water tanker.

'Sorted!' she chuckled to herself, before catching the exultant tone in her voice. Going into the deep desert with nobody to help was not really "sorted", more sort of "desperate".

Another item "borrowed" from Roger's tent was a compass. Sarah knew that locating her own position in the featureless wastes of Cyrenaica would be difficult without a point of reference. Hence the compass. Which, she had to admit, seemed a lot more complex than she imagined. There was a movable dial around the compass face, and a folding cover that indicated positions of the sun, and the interior of the compass was full of liquid.

Her plan was to strike out from the supply dump, on a fixed compass bearing, get a mile or two out and then find the highest ground possible. She ought to be able to view the surrounding desert well enough to spot the TARDIS if it had appeared yet.

If only that Italian count in his aircraft hadn't been so trigger-happy! she told herself, trudging over the pea gravel. Really, what kind of pilot wasted a bomb on a police-box?

After a good half hour, Sarah could see her tracks stretching backwards to the east as she travelled due west, the camp lost to view amidst heat haze and undulations in the desert floor. Sticking to her self-appointed restriction, she swallowed a little water out of the bottle, making a face at the nasty chlorinated after-taste.

'Yuck! No wonder they make tea out of it!' she told the desert air. Now to find higher ground, and hopefully the TARDIS.

The nearest vantage point lay still further to the west, more north-north-west, so she manfully set her shoulders and hiked on. Before she got there, a wide dry wadi opened up at her feet, so abruptly that she nearly fell into it. Detouring around it would add another five minutes to her walk, so she braced her knees and jumped down the side in a small shower of rocks and dirt, sliding awkwardly and knocking her hat off.

The first thing she noticed were the strangely-regular shapes of big bushes under the far lip of the wadi, bushes with outlines broken up by netting.

'Oh! J Force!' she realised, out loud, giving them a wave. This probably saved her life, since the brawny, hairy left forearm that snaked around her neck from behind didn't exert crushing force, and the big bayonet stuck in her throat at the right barely broke the skin.

Petrified, Sarah noticed the ingrained dust in the pores of the arm that held her, the acrid smell of sweat and garlic, the notches in the bayonet blade.

'Silence!' hissed a voice. 'I you try to run or cry out I will kill you.'

The sweaty arm withdrew, allowing Sarah to turn a little and see who threatened her.

A burly, moustachioed man in grey-green uniform, dusty and sweaty, clutching a bayonet in his right hand.

'A woman! You are lucky I heard you, woman. Few people walk away from my embrace. Now, walk to the vehicles.'

Jarringly, Sarah realised she was a prisoner of the Italian Army.

From beneath the cover of the camouflage netting, Tenente Dominione watched Sergente Maggiore Cappriccio prod the prisoner forward, toward the command car. It took several uncomprehending seconds before Dominione realised that the unusually slim British soldier, with the unusually long hair was actually a woman. What in the name of the Blessed Virgin was a single woman doing wandering around in the wastes of Cyrenaica? A nurse? Separated from her unit? Not in uniform, either, but given the piratical dress that desert-canny Britons wore that wasn't entirely surprising.

He held up the netting to allow them both to enter, dropping it carefully afterwards, making sure it didn't sag off the pole. His English was limited, and he might need to summon Caporale Balduccio, who spoke it fluently, to interrogate the prisoner.

'Miss,' he said, bowing slightly. He dismissed the rouguish Capriccio with a nod and dart of the eyebrows. There was no risk from the woman, not with a private sitting behind him in the Sahariana, watchful behind a machine-gun.

'Who are you, and what are you doing out here, miss?' he asked in Italian, remaining polite. The steel fist could be revealed soon enough.

'My name is Sarah Jane Smith and I'm a journalist,' replied the woman, in excellent Italian.

Dominione put his hands on his hips, frowning. A journalist? A reporter?

'You are here to report on the war?' he asked.

'Oh, no! No, I'm only here by accident.'

The officer snorted in amused disbelief.

'How coincidental that is, Miss Smith. You just happen to stumble upon our camp by accident.'

The woman grinned weakly.

'It is a bit feeble, isn't it? I was trying to find my – transport. We lost it earlier and had to take shelter with soldiers at the camp.'

Sarah realised, with a thrill of horror, that she'd said entirely the wrong thing.

'Soldiers, eh? How many?'

'A lot less than there used to be!' snapped Sarah, going on to the offensive. 'We were attacked, you know. Black tanks, three of them, that killed a lot of the soldiers. And the Italian prisoners, too.'

Carro Armato Negre? wondered the lieutenant. The Tedeschi were unloading tanks at Triploli, he knew that, and some of the heavier models were still in black European paint schemes.

'They weren't human,' continued Sarah stubbornly, seeing the officer's look of interest become one of disbelief. 'Alien. Not from Earth.'

Dominione cast a pitying look at the obviously deranged woman, who nevertheless managed to seem nearly normal. The private behind him sniggered unkindly.

Quarter of an hour later, Sarah sat in the back of the command Sahariana, the vehicle used by the tall, slender Italian officer. Her thumbs were tied securely together with wire, not tight enough to hurt, tight enough to rebuff any attempt to wriggle free. A driver and radio-operator in the front of the big desert car looked at her with frank appreciation, a look that Sarah was beginning to understand if not like: a woman amongst countless men. The Tenente looked at her, too, with considerably less longing and a lot more worry, his bright blue eyes expressing concern. A female civilian, babbling about murderous black tanks that killed everyone they touched – just what he didn't need! He wasn't about to break radio silence to report in to Camionista HQ about the prisoner, not yet.

After the raid, he decided. When he'd gotten some revenge for the humiliating retreat he made across the desert of Cyrenaica in January, he and his platoon. Most of them had volunteered for the Camionista group, eager to get their own back at the British. For too long, eight months, the British had been raiding and ambushing behind Italian lines. Now the Camionistas would be repaying that "Jackal Force" in kind.

'Once it begins to get dark, we remove the netting and move out,' he told the radio-operator. 'To Rendezvous One. Pass the message on to the other cars.'


	5. Chapter 5

**Nine: From the Depths**

The Doctor pondered mutely whilst driving, trying to reach an understanding of what the garrison at Mersa Martuba had undergone.

An assault, certainly. But by Italian "infernal engines"? Ridiculous! The technology involved in creating those glass vehicles was at least several centuries beyond current human capability. Then there was the dreadful killing mechanism involved; he wasn't familiar with that, a method that reduced human beings to dessicated bundles of stringy waste. From what Roger said, a similar fate befell the workers at Mersa Martuba before war started, a fact which made the Doctor feel even less satisfied. Manipulation of time vectors could produce a similar end result, except he hadn't felt the slightest hint of interference in the fifth dimension.

No, there was an alien influence at work here, one that the Time Lords on Gallifrey deemed important enough to divert the TARDIS to intervene in.

'Nincompoops!' he muttered, to the empty air. Things would be so much simpler if they'd only given him a clue! 'Hands-off deniability!' he huffed.

The Chevrolet ploughed into the sands that marked the beginning of the dune sea, and the Doctor slowed the big truck, gradually bringing it to a halt facing back the way he'd come. You couldn't be too careful – getting back that way in a hurry might be important.

He brought his sonic screwdriver out of a pocket and trained it on the driver's-side door window, moving slowly up through the frequencies until the whole glass panel suddenly became opaque with a sharp _ping_, a fan of crystalline traceries spreading outwards across the pane. The whole window fell outwards in a shower of glass fragments, allowing hot desert air to flood into the cab.

'Forearmed, if not forewarned,' he muttered to the desert sands. The small arc of tents remained deserted, their fabric flapping in the breeze. No signs of life there. On the other hand, there were three trails leading from the excavation, tracks that ramped over the walls of the basin sheltering the dig, heading off towards the Forward Supply Depot. The three alien devices came from further within the site, then.

Slowly, listening carefully to whatever sounds the wind carried, the Doctor moved up along the track that led towards the dig.

Nothing. No sound of any movement or working at all. No sound of human voices, either, which worried him. If the expeditionary trio had survived, they'd be busily discussing their survival.

Arriving at the lip of the sand basin, he lay carefully on the sands and crawled forwards, until the excavated buildings of Makin Al-Jinni lay below his gaze. Once again, coming back after viewing endless vistas of sand or crude clay buildings or piled pyramids of military supplies, once again he felt struck by the other-worldliness of the complex

Still no movement, he realised. No movement, no sounds of work, no displays of recent activity. Those monstrous black glass vehicles might very well have killed all three of the workers here.

Dragging a small telescope from one of the capacious pockets of his coat, the Doctor scanned the whole site, quartering it twice over just to make sure.

'But screw your courage to the sticking-place, Doctor,' he told himself severely, standing up and striding along the well-trodden sand path, down into the basin and the excavation. Fortunately for him, the path came in from the north-west, and the bulk of The Temple and The Dias shielded him from any curious eyes.

Now, being closer to the buildings, he could hear a subdued, almost inaudible humming.

'Hmm. Non-nuclear, to judge by the timbre and frequency. Oh!'

A dusty hand, trembling and infirm, reached out to tug at his trouser cuff from beneath the sands. As he looked on in startled alarm, the sand rose, revealing a canvas fabric beneath, it's top the upper lip of the canvas tent used by the diggers to shelter from the worst of the sun.

'Get in!' hissed a frantic Albert. 'Quickly!' He raised the canvas higher, allowing the Doctor to slip beneath it. The second he was under, Albert dropped the canvas roof, creating a small pocket of dark, sweaty, smelly, claustrophobic safety and concealment.

'Albert! Did your companions survive?'

'Not Professor Borguebus. A big black glass – black – something evil, it – it killed him. Shrivelled him into nothing.'

Too late for one of the team. The Doctor lit up the interior of the refuge with his sonic screwdriver, casting a wan green light over Albert. Over in a corner, Templeman lurked, looking alternately sullen and dangerous. A camping stove lay on its side between them, a makeshift kettle abandoned alongside it. You couldn't really continue making tea here.

'We hid in here when it killed Borguebus,' said the Professor.

'Are they some kind of Axis secret weapon?' whispered Albert.

'No. They were here long before the Axis arose, Albert. I believe they were left here by the creatures who built this complex.'

Templeman pounced on this use of language.

' "Creatures"? What do you mean? And this religious complex has been here for five thousand years, Doctor Smith. That means those machines cannot have been left here. Not by anyone, least of all "creatures". '

The Time Lord looked witheringly at Templeman.

'Lieutenant Llewellyn described how you suffered losses of workers here the last time. They encountered these machines, Professor.'

'Nonsense!' blustered Templeman, not sounding quite as convinced of his own correctness now. 'Rogues ran off with temple artefacts, that's all.'

'A species of guard device, is my conjecture,' said the Doctor, thinking aloud. 'Triggered by proximity. Any traveller of several millenia in the past who ventured too close to Makin Al Jinni was detected and killed by these machines, including your site workers.'

'You saw Borguebus,' said Albert, a firmer note entering his speech. 'Nothing left of him but rags. Even his clothes fell apart. If that happened to one of your Arab workers, the wind would get rid of the remains in minutes.'

'Creatures,' continued the Doctor. 'Creatures bigger then humans, which accounts for the scale of these structures. Creatures that constructed this site for a utilitarian purpose, thus accounting for the absence of decoration. Creatures that are not human, and probably not native to this world.'

Professor Templeman, proving he had more flexibility in his intellect than others might suspect, went over the evidence and found that Doctor John Smith's hypothesis covered the salient facts.

'I have news that you might welcome,' added the Doctor. 'The three machines made their way to Mersa Martuba and attacked the garrison there. They killed a lot of soldiers, British and Italian, but were destroyed themselves.'

Both the others perked up visibly at this news.

'Why attack the soldiers?' asked Albert. 'They're armed. They can defend themselves.'

'Yes. Why would a machine that functions as a sentinel abandon it's post?' added Templeman.

'Not all of them were armed. The Italians were prisoners. Oh – I wonder, Albert, I wonder.'Sudden inspiration struck the Doctor. 'The Italians were the key! Don't you see?'

Barely visible in the sweaty gloom, Albert and Templeman shook their heads.

'Thirty-eight prisoners, plus J Force – at least another thirty soldiers, and the garrison – say another twenty men. Nearly ninety people, all concentrated in one space.'

'Must be a while since there's been that many people round here,' joked Albert.'Not much in the way of tourist attractions.'

'Exactly! My point precisely – a population density of such magnitude that it caused the machines here to detect it and move to intercept it.'

'Well, let's get out of this fug,' grumbled Templeman. 'I'm nearly choking, here.'

Cautiously and slowly, they raised the canvas cover and peered from underneath it. No signs of killer machinery greeted their eyes.

'Ah. Fresh air,' said Albert, revelling in the dry heat.

'Be careful,' warned the Doctor. 'I believe those killer machines were transmitting energy back to this location, reason unknown.'

He briefly sketched in his theory about The Dais being a trans-mat platform, to the incredulity of both audience members.

'Geo-thermal power?' queried Templeman. 'Preposterous! No such thing exists!'

'Not in your technology, no,' replied the Doctor, drily. 'In fact the leap between current energy production and geo-thermal utilities is about the same as the gap between windmills and hydro-electric power.'

Templeman and Albert exchanged glances, not quite sure if Doctor Smith was making fun of them or being accurate and truthful.

Taking the role of leader by unspoken agreement, the Doctor led them up the wooden steps to The Temple's interior, slightly cooler in the shade than the baking sand basin. They slunk between pillars, casting watchful eyes over the rest of the site.

Nothing seemed obviously different. No movement anywhere, only the thin sound made by the hot desert breeze as it rushed around the pillars, the dust it carried tickling the nose and eyes. The whole place might have been undisturbed for centuries, such was the air of dereliction.

A slight disturbance in the sands to their north caught the eye of Albert, who tugged at the Doctor's coat and pointed. All three moved back behind the cover of pillars, just in case.

A dimple appeared in the un-excavated sands a hundred yards from The Temple, growing larger by the second, until a big funnel-shaped depression thirty feet across existed. With little noise, a big black glassy machine drove up out of the sand funnel, pushing a small wall of sand ahead of it in front of a glassy dozer blade.

Albert and Templeman froze in fear, getting ready to flee. The Doctor stood still, carefully noting the difference between this machine and the ones he'd seen at the Depot.

'Stay still!' he hissed at the other two men. 'That one's not dangerous.'

Instead of the flailing, energy-draining arms, this machine mounted only a big dozer blade on the front, and there were no circular aerials ringing the central "drum". The machine began to scrape tons of sand away from the area near the funnel, shoving it into the area between The Temple and where it had emerged. The funnel lip became shallower, allowing another identical vehicle to appear and begin to shift more sand. This process was repeated every five minutes, until over a dozen identical vehicles were moving around the complex.

'What are they doing?' asked Albert.

'Excavating,' answered Templeman. 'Completing the work we started. Which proves that there is a structure under there to be excavated.' He turned slightly to face the Doctor whilst still watching the synchronised ballet of the excavators. 'We probed the sand with poles, and there is an unyielding object at that location. It was too level and regular to be a natural rock formation.'

More activity at the brink of the sand basin attracted their attention. The Doctor's telescope resolved another black object, a cylindrical tube, the end projecting well beyond the lip of the sand basin, and running back into the sands within. It was supported clear of the sands by a pair of transverse rollers and the muzzle began to spout a steady stream of sand, throwing it beyond the brink. Very slowly, the rollers moved the tube along the crest.

'Sub-surface sand removal,' explained the Doctor to a puzzled Albert. 'That pipe extends all the way back into this complex and is moving sand from around the buildings at the very bottom.' Similar in function to the piping and pumping equipment used to help bring Titanic back to the surface, in fact – or was that in the next century?

The appearance of these modified machines bespoke a responsive intelligence, able to react to the long shrouding of the site with sand. An intelligence, moreover, that had only recently become aware. Or else why had the whole site been left to abandonment?

'I think we ought to leave,' said Albert, visibly nervous.

'Tch!' scorned the Doctor. 'I judge the mean speed of those machines to be twenty miles per hour over loose sand. How fast can you travel? Three miles per hour? Six? You wouldn't even get to the rim before they ran you down.'

Albert stared back accusingly.

'You said they weren't dangerous!'

The Doctor nodded.

'Certainly. As long as we remain here. A vehicle only six feet tall cannot surmount an eight foot perpendicular step.'

Albert acknowledged the truth of this by looking embarassed. Professor Templeman continued to look at the excavation taking place beyond their refuge.

'Remarkable!' he murmured. 'Look at that. The work of months done in hours.'

The diligent machines slowly cleared sand from a collection of structures, moving it to half a dozen different locations around the complex, from where it was carried by pipe and ejected over the wall of the sand basin. Gradually the building the black glass vehicles came from emerged into daylight, a long structure tha curved round in a semi-circle with one end open to the elements. Periodically one of the machines would return there, only to re-emerge a few minutes later. To the east of that structure, directly north of The Dais, a squat cuboidal building sat. Diametrically opposite, on the other side of The Dais to the south, a row of three smaller cuboids were slowly exposed to view. At the eastern cardinal point of the compass, if The Dais was viewed as central to the complex, a jagged black cylindrical stump ten feet high showed where a damaged building had stood. When the excavation neared it's end, the remains of the missing part could be seen: a two hundred yard-long needle that lay shattered in pieces, pointing to the south-east like a stuck compass.

This toppled monolith had smashed open a domed building when it fell, but two more similar domes lay to the north and south of the smashed one, still intact.

'Do you know what these buildings are for, Doctor Smith?' asked Templeman, humbly, probably the first time in his life he'd ever been so abject.

'As I said, The Dais is a gigantic trans-mat platform. My guess is that curved building the machines keep popping back into is a combined factory and energy station.'

Neither man quite followed this explanation.

'I mean, the machines are manufactured there. The factory uses geo-thermal energy to create them and power them – notice that they return there, probably for re-charging, every half-hour.'

Which begged another question, realised the Time Lord. If the complex here used geo-thermal energy – and there was no question that it _did_ – then what did those repellent destructive machines at Mersa Martuba drain biomorphic energy for?

Perhaps that fallen spire would have used the energy in some fashion. Long-destroyed, perhaps it now rendered the alien technology's operation redundant.

'Gosh – look at that!' whispered Albert, urgently. 'Those domes!'

He referred to the two intact domes, which had slowly shed their smothering blanket of sand. Suddenly, any dust left on the glossy black curves shot into the air uniformly, drifting down to ground level without settling back on the curved surfaces.

Remembering his earlier quote from Macbeth, the Doctor felt his skin crawl with apprehension, and possibly premonition; his erratic and wilful parapsychological talents at work, maybe. What was the quote again?

'Something wicked this way comes.'

Farmer Imgelissa had come up on the Overseer's rota to take supplies of bottled algae to the great, grey-granite pile of the Northern Littoral Research Site. He had four hundred bottles to take, carried on the special sled with static-friction runners, and need of a colleague to help tow or push on hard stretches.

He chose Farmer Nurbonissa, the short yet stocky newcomer from the Inland Lakes region. Nurbonissa wasn't big, so didn't need lots of algae to keep himself going, but he was strong, and young and willing.

The gaggle of Overseers approved of Imgelissa's choice without quibbling.

Most unusual! he thought. Avoid a chance to point up their superiority in the caste ladder? They seemed to be discussing secrets amongst themselves, rather than paying attention to normal, humiliating ritual.

Nurbonissa was pleased and flattered to be chosen as an assistant.

'Don't be too happy, young one,' warned Imgelissa, drily. 'We have merely one per cent of the cargo to use ourselves – four bottles.'

'Four bottles we wouldn't get otherwise, Farmer,' replied Nurbonissa. Imgelissa tutted in amusement. Youngsters!

'Okay, I'll pull the sled for the first stretch. You can take over after one thousand paces.'

The big sled stood underneath the blank windows of the accomodation block, harness neatly draped over the cargo boxes. Imgelissa picked up the harness links, took up the slack and dragged the sled away to the north.

Part of the reason he chose Nurbonissa was to have a new topic of conversation during the dull and tiring chore.

'Now, young one, I've never been to the Inland Lakes. Others tell me they're a paradise compared to our life here on the beaches. Is that true?'

Nurbonissa laughed a short, barking laugh.

'Paradise? Paradise! Nothing like, Farmer. No, it is not true. The Overseers regularly apportion five per cent of the population to be consumed, to placate the Warriors.'

Farmer Imgelissa almost turned in the traces, at hearing the figure of five per cent. Here on the beach community the worst ever amounted to two per cent.

'Five per cent! No wonder you moved!'

Nurbonissa made the reflexive double-wave that implied a shrug.

'Not much point in staying. The Overseers and Warriors had fallen to about half their normal population level, algae production was down, strange mineral salts had poisoned some of our stock.'

Definitely not paradise, then. Imgelissa informed his youthful charge of the facts about life on the beach community. Long, hard hours of work. The chance of being caught out by some newly introduced rule that meant your life energies got Eviscerated up by a Warrior. Constant, incessant bullying by the Overseers. Chores like this one – delivering supplies to the Research Site.

"Long Hard chores", Imgelissa might have added. They got to the NLRS after half a day's march, only to be almost ignored. The Overseers and Technicians there were running around with excitement, more gleeful than Imgelissa had ever seen them. The humble Farmer managed to gain access to one of the scientific monitor stations, all flashing display panels and glowing lights, before being chased away.

'This is very unusual,' he told Nurbonissa on the way back to barracks. 'I've never seen them so worried and anxious.'

Ten: The Sleepers Awake 

While the Doctor and his two highly-reluctant companions watched, the dome furthest from them began to emit a grating, squealing racket as the curved surface began to roll back, revealing the interior.

Rows and rows of black glassy boxes, arrayed in patterns on a flat black floor. The Doctor counted twenty seven, wondering what they were.

This mystery was revealed when the boxes began to slide open, one wall merging seamlessly into the body of each structure. From the newly-created doorway in each case strode a creature definitely not from planet Earth.

'Good God!' gasped the normally firmly-atheistic Professor Templeman. Albert gulped in silent, eloquent testimony. The Doctor looked keenly on, using his telescope.

The creatures stood about eight feet tall, their torso consisting of a massive pillar that bifurcated into powerful legs, ending in webbed feet. There didn't appear to be any visible neck, and their arms were long, powerfully-muscled limbs that emerged from the torso at eye level. Two big, dark eyes sat in the torso, two thirds of the way up, above a thin, wide slash of a mouth. A snaking, weaving proboscis easily as long as the creature's arms lay beneath and between the eyes. Their skin seemed leathery and dull, in varying shades of red, shading into brown and purple.

Once there were twenty seven creatures out in the open, they began to perform exercises in unison, standing alongside their recent cells.

'Monsters!' gurgled Albert. 'Monsters!'

'Nonsense!' chided the Doctor. 'Aliens.'

'What are they doing? It looks like the warm-up before a rugby match,' commented Templeman, fascinated despite himself. He mentally noted that the Doctor's bizarre, not to say impossible, hypothesis, had been proved absolutely correct.

'I think you're partly correct, Professor. Those creatures have been in – let us say _hibernation_ – for several millenia. Being inert for that long must mean a few muscle kinks to work out.'

Various clues were falling into place for the Doctor. To be really certain, he'd need to get up close to one of those aliens.

'What are they? And how did they get here?' asked Albert, his tongue finally unsticking.

The Doctor screwed up his eyes and thought, hard.

'Their physiology denotes an amphibian evolution, Albert. I would guess that their body-shape descends from a form designed to move easily in water. Two eyes, close together, positioned at the front of the body indicates a predatory history. No large talons or visible fangs, however. And they got here via the trans-mat.'

The assembled creatures carried out their gymnastic exercise for nearly an hour, before stopping in ones and twos. A section of the dome wall sank away into the interior and a long, inclined walkway emerged, forming an angled ramp that the creatures walked down. One party split off and headed for the shattered dome, checking over the sand and rubble-strewn interior. Finding nothing worth rescuing or reviving, they then made their way to the first dome, which began to grate and squeal as it, too, opened up.

The second party of aliens made their way to a cuboidal structure north of The Dais. One whole wall concertinaed inwards, allowing the creatures to enter. They spent a long time inside,emerging into daylight only when they had acquired their equivalent of combined clothing and armour. Most of them now wore great padded jackets, replete with rings, pockets, belts, straps and clips, from which dangled unguessable alien technology. A quarter of them wore cylindrical helmets, and most had padded armour covering their arms and legs.

Uncomfortable things to wear in a desert, realised the Doctor. Formal militaristic equipment. Probably a bonding and rank-establishing ritual. This did not bode well!

Several of the helmet-clad aliens stood around the shattered pylon, pointing at it and discussing amongst themselves.

By the time the intact second dome's population had emerged from their little black boxes, the sun had sunk low in the sky.

'Can you do something for me?' asked the Doctor of Albert and Professor Templeman. They nodded. 'I want you to go back to your camp and take the truck you'll find there. Drive it to the garrison at Mersa Martuba and tell them what's happened here.' He dangled the keys for the truck from his hand, tempting them.

There were few protests at this declaration.

'What are you going to do?' asked Templeman.

'Well, naturally, I'm going to go and have a closer look at our new companions!' beamed the Doctor, blandly.

His erstwhile companions stole away silently, not convinced that their ally was being sensible. The Doctor watched both them and the aliens alternately, worried in case the latter detected the former whilst crossing the lip of the sand basin. Fortunately the shadows of dusk camouflaged the pair, and they presented no more than a fleeting shadow to any onlookers.

Adopting a suitably martial pose, hands on torso, Detachment Leader Sorbusa pivoted to look over the Infiltration Complex and his technical complement.

Damn but it was still hot here! Not that he could or would ever admit it, not in front of the staff, since that would be displaying weakness. After undergoing centuries of perfectly-balanced metabolic equilibrium, emerging into the harsh and relentless daylight of this world had been a real trial-by-fire.

He looked ruefully at the collapsed Telemetry Tower, shattered apart. That meant resorting to a slow and laborious trawl amongst the electromagnetic wavelengths of this world's native species, even presuming that the primitives were able to broadcast by now.

Nor was that all the bad news. No, in it's ruin the Tower had fallen across Survival Dome Two, shattering it, smashing the cryo-cubes of the warriors inside. Twenty seven sleepers down already.

A shout from one of the patrolling scouts called him over to the Headquarters building.

Sorbusa looked in surprise and astonishment at the bizarre material structure erected over the steps of the Headquarters, designed to make access more difficult, it seemed.

Sub-Leader Emdoko came up behind him, appraising what the patrol had found.

'The excavators didn't build this, Detachment Leader,' said the Sub-Leader, with just the right amount of deference.

'Obviously not,' retorted Sorbusa. 'Which makes it all the more important we discover what has been happening during our hibernation.'

A team of technicians were in one of the Science Support buildings, situated to the south of the Trans-Mat platform, with that aim in mind. Sorbusa rounded on Emdoko.

'Sub-Leader! I want the excavators recycled into Combat Cars, as soon as possible. It ought to have been done already!'

Emdoko quailed in justified fear. Failure to anticipate, failure to predict, failure in any sense was liable to lead to Evisceration.

'I will see to it personally, Detachment Leader!' he shrilled, departing at a rapid jog.

Sorbusa headed to Science Support One, needing to duck to enter – the excavation hadn't removed quite enough sand from the doorway and surrounding area.

'Detachment Leader!' barked one of the technicians, jumping up in salute.

'Enough of that,' complained Sorbusa. 'What progress?'

The Lead Technician covered his proboscis with both hands, a gesture of nervousness.

'Detachment Leader, from our quartz chronometer, we determine that our hibernation has been – has been for approximately – ah – five thousand years.'

Sorbusa felt as if he'd been hit with the first stage of Evisceration.

'Five – thousand years?' he whispered.

The Lead Technician bowed in silent acknowledgement.

Sorbusa looked at the newly-activated ranks of equipment panels, the flickering displays, the sequences of lights; looked and did not see.

Five thousand years!

The longest his race managed to survive, given unlimited access to sources of life-energy, was two hundred years. This Detachment had been in deep sleep for twenty-five generations. All his relatives, and offspring, and their offspring, and their's too, were all long since dust.

For all he knew, their homeworld was dust, too.

'I do have some good news,' ventured the Lead Technician. Sorbusa waved a hand to continue. 'The Trans-Mat link is still active. Our activation of the Infiltration Complex will be notified back home.'

'So home still exists?' asked Sorbusa. More "demanded" than asked, really.

'Oh, yes,' agreed the Lead Technician. 'The signal is a reciprocal process. A Trans-Mat complex must exist back there for us to get an acknowledgement. For an acknowledgement to arrive means their Trans-Mat is still active and powered.'

The Detachment Leader felt massively relieved, but of course could not show this.

One of the Sub-Technicians raised a hand to be acknowledged. Sorbusa waved a hand back.

'Detachment Leader, we have been able to monitor various wavelengths utilised by this planet's native species.'

'Go on.'

'They appear to be involved in an inter-species war. This area of the continent is part of the battlefield, and the Infiltration Complex is on the periphery of a recent battle.'

Good, thought the Detachment Leader. The more natives there were nearby, the better the bio-energy harvest would be.

Sorbusa waved an arm for silence, wanting to think in quiet.

So, the Sentinel Cars on guard duty must have come across an array of the local natives, and transferred their bio-energy to the Survival Domes, allowing his Detachment to revive. That blessed input of energy wouldn't last long, however. They needed more, and those local natives would supply it.

'Determine the location of the nearest natives. We will move against them. Also, brief and equip one technician for despatch back home via the Trans-mat. He will carry news of what we know to our superiors.'

Fumbling slightly with the keys for the Chevrolet, Albert started up and drove straight away from Makin Al-Jinni, not looking backwards. He half-regretted leaving the Webley with the Doctor, especially since the man had looked at the revolver as if it would turn in his hands and bite.

Professor Templeman sighed heavily, looking in the mirror and holding his head in both hands.

'One of the greatest discoveries of the age, Albert, and we have to abandon it. Living proof of creatures from other worlds! Alien technology, alien equipment, aliens walking around, and we have to leave it all behind.'

'We're alive, Professor. If we'd stayed behind we wouldn't be. I've no idea how Doctor Smith is going to get closer to those monsters, nor what he's going to do when he does.'

Albert dropped a gear to drive up an inclined bank of sandstone.

'I don't know what the soldiers at Martuba are going to say. Captain Dobie isn't very fond of us in the first place.'

The Professor's face expressed craftiness.

'Ah, but we will approach Roger first! Lieutenant Llewellyn.'

The Doctor remained in The Temple, watching aliens below stump around inspecting different buildings, aliens with helmets directing aliens without helmets, aliens re-opening buildings, aliens shoo-ing the excavating robots back into the building they had emerged from.

At one point a pair of aliens came to puzzle over the wooden staircase that led up to the Temple's interior, making the Time Lord worry about having to hide behind a pillar. In the end he didn't have to resort to anything so undignified, since the aliens went off in different directions.

He tried to extrapolate from what behaviour he'd seen so far. These aliens were awakening from a considerable period in cryogenic suspension, then having to make sense of the world around them. How long had they been "asleep"?

'Several thousand years, at least,' he muttered to himself. During which time enormous changes had taken place on planet Earth. These aliens would need to acclimatise themselves in terms of arrival into the twentieth century, when they had arrived hereabouts around the Year Zero, and even that was giving them the benefit of at least a thousand years.

He caught sight of a small commotion taking place at the curved factory building. An alien with helmet – in fact the one that seemed to be in command – was gesturing at another. Their voices were raised, and got louder.

The Doctor grinned with a degree of malicious glee. Even world-spanning aliens could get it wrong!

What happened next made the grin vanish instantly. The commanding alien, with a purple and tan body colouring, lashed out with it's proboscis at the other alien, which instantly went rigid. As the Doctor looked on, the victim began to shrivel and waste away, collapsing inwards until all that remained were the jacket and fitments, and the empty helmet sat upon them all.

Instantly, the Doctor knew what those robots had been doing. Harvesting the energy from living beings, which was transmitted back to this site, allowing the alien garrison to emerge again after millenia asleep.

Then, that made these aliens bio-vores, able to live only by draining the life-force from other living organisms.

Alien bio-vores with trans-mat capability. This, this above all was what the Time Lords had diverted him and Sarah to investigate and prevent.

'Hah! Prevent!' he snorted. There were over fifty of the aliens out there on the site, with their robot excavators. What chance did he have of preventing anything? True, there was the venerable Webley revolver, which he had no intention of using to kill anyone or anything with. It was safer with him than with the rather panicky Albert, though.

A sudden stroke of inspiration struck the Doctor. He had an idea of what to do – risky, but worthwhile if it worked.

Detachment Leader Sorbusa adopted his familiar martial stance, one footweb braced on the shrivelled remnants of Sub Leader Emdoko.

The Sub Leader definitely deserved to be Eviscerated, in that he'd not ordered the factory brain to produce a series of Transport Cars. Sorbusa himself hadn't ordered that, either. However, he did want to instil a feeling of respectful fear and awe amongst the Detachment.

Sub Leader Pakmiro now stood to attention in front of Sorbusa.

'Sub Leader, order the factory to produce three Transport Cars, carrying capacity ten persons. Mount a heavy cannon upon each.'

Pakmiro bowed smartly, then scurried off to perform his task, propelled by the proper degree of fear. Sorbusa felt happier about that; properly awed minions were less likely to challenge and kill him.

One of the Lead Technicians came up to Sorbusa, cringing appropriately.

'Detachment Leader, we have prepared a technician to go through the trans-mat. He awaits your orders.'

Sorbusa made his way to the Trans-Mat Platform, where a warrior stood waiting. In his hand was a scroll of wafer-thin glass, inscribed with details of what the Detachment knew about the world they had emerged into. Not much, really. Still, they hadn't been awake for even a whole day yet.

'You know what your duty is?' asked the Detachment Leader.

'Yes, Leader. I am to present myself to the highest authority beyond the trans-mat and report our situation to them, including the possibility of many sources of bio-morphic energy existing on this planet.'

Sorbusa made the chopping hand gesture that signified approval. He stalked off the platform and over to Science Support One, giving the Lead Technician permission to operate the trans-mat.

The warning siren went three times, and the twin pylons on the platform flashed a dull red three times. The waiting bio-vore vanished instantly, without any sound or light display.

Technician Andoletri, the one chosen to go through the trans-mat, experienced a brief feeling of nausea and vertigo, whilst his surroundings changed from the dusky, dry, hot, dusty desert basin of the Infiltration Complex to the brilliant sunlight of Homeworld, less harsh under the twin red suns, and with a tang that he remembered from decades – actually millenia – ago, before he was sent to Target World Seventeen via trans-mat.

Warning sirens sounded nearby, as Andoletri turned to take in the vista. A huge grey building stood behind the trans-mat platform, which hadn't been there when he'd departed. To north, west and south the familiar barren landscapes rolled away, except that they seemed to lack even the emergency plantations that were being harvested when he was here. To the east lay the sea – and a peculiar-looking sea, at that, choked with weed for miles and miles. Were those objects out there actual live people?

A squad of bio-vores marched onto the platform at the double, having run up the access ramp at the side after being alerted by the sirens.

'I come from the Seventeeth Target World,' began Andoletri, the speech having been rehearsed several times already. 'I bring important news. Take me to the most senior paramilitary officer.'

'Silence!' rasped one of the guards. Andoletri suddenly realised, with surprise, that they were all considerably smaller than he was, and their probosces were all carried in a pouch, instead of hanging free. He also realised, with an unpleasant foreboding, that they were pointing shard-throwers at him. Weapons designed to kill immediately.

'But I have vital information - ' he began.

'Silence, heretic!' snapped the guard. 'Remove all your equipment. Deposit it into the disposal box.' Another guard produced a black glass bin.

Andoletri put his clothing, equipment and weapons into the bin, only pausing with the scroll.

'This is information about the Seventeenth Target World,' he explained, laying the scroll carefully on the platform.

'You were warned, heretic!' shouted the guard leader, raising his shard-thrower. All twelve of the guard detail opened fire, their flechettes slashing into the hapless arrivee, killing him in an instant. The guard leader stamped maliciously on the scroll, shattering it into a mass of glass fragments.

'Remove this carcass,' ordered the guard leader. He watched the body of Andoletri being dragged and thrown unceremoniously from the platform.

'Inform Lord Excellency Sur that as per instructions the heretic is dead. Also, we are ready to send our own unsullied warriors to the Target World.'

Lord Excellency Sur arrived soon after in his personal transport, a friction-sled drawn by ten warriors on punishment detail. He left them in their traces and solemnly walked up the access ramp to the platform.

'Guard Leader Skatachino, sir,' grovelled the leader of the squad that had killed Andoletri, ready to hear praises of his name and promotion, perhaps even a ritual Shortening Of The Name.

Lord Excellency Sur had brought his own Lead Technician with him, and the latter quickly ran through a series of checks and reported back to Sur.

'Skatachino, come here,' boomed Sur. The eager squad leader ran across the trans-mat platform. He stood in front of Sur, which made it easier for the Commander to shoot out his proboscis and Eviscerate the squad leader.

'The trans-mat is no longer working! Take that with you, you blundering incompetent!' bellowed Sur, to the rapidly-shrivelling bundle of fibre that had been Guard Leader Skatachino.


	6. Chapter 6

Eleven: Moving from A to B 

Dominione went from car to car, making sure the men were awake and alert, giving the order to remove camouflage netting and stow their poles. Dusk was falling, casting a darker shadow over the sunken watercourse from the far lip, concealing the Sahariana desert cars as they started up engines and began to move north.

Sarah now sported a gag, a knotted rope that went tight around her head and held her jaws slightly open. The loudest sound she could manage was a gurgle, and since that drew a hostile glare from the soldier manning the machine gun, she refrained.

The command car she lay in as a helpless captive was the lead vehicle, enabling her to look behind and see at least a dozen other cars following, darker shapes against the watercourse. The bottom of the wadi gradually shelved upwards, allowing the convoy to drive out onto the level stretch of gravel beyond.

Driving slowly by compass and map, using a heavily-shielded torch to read by, Dominione led the convoy across the desert north of Mersa Martuba, then swung in to approach it from the east. A long detour, yes, but one he felt sure would catch the British unawares, thinking that any vehicles coming from their rear would be friendly.

The radio operator picked up and put on a British steel helmet, getting up to stand on the running board of the car. He turned to cast a look at Sarah, holding a knife up to his lips in a warning gesture.

Don't worry about me, you brute! I can hardly breathe let alone shout a warning! thought Sarah to herself, glaring at the soldier.

'Wothca!' called the Italian soldier, in a greeting to someone Sarah couldn't see, as the car came to a halt. His Cockney accent was perfect.

'This is Mersa Martuba, innit mate?' An indistinct voice came from the front of the car, followed by the crunch of footsteps, a gasp of alarm and the sounds of a scuffle. With an agonised intake of breath, the sounds stopped, and the Italian got back into the car, wiping his knife on the sleeve of his blouse.

Dominione pulled the car over to one side, motioning the rest of the convoy forwards, cocking a big signal pistol. Half the convoy passed by the command car before alarmed shouts began to come from the British garrison as they discovered the intruders. Dominone fired a parachute flare into the air, which threw a scuttering, erratic light over the depot, revealing the garrison running about in alarm.

Sarah winced in alarm as the machine gun mounted behind her began to fire, lighting the car up with each shot. Dominione fired another flare, shouting in Italian to the radio operator.

Please let it stop! prayed Sarah, her stomach clenched in anxiety.

Silently, and stealthily, helpfully concealed by the darkness that came early to the sand basin, the Doctor slid down the great stone steps of The Temple. He aimed for the canvas shelter where Albert and the Professor had sought refuge, dropping to the sand and crawling beneath it undetected.

Having seen the aliens sweeping the trans-mat platform clear, he knew there was little time until they began to use it. One transmission from this station to the receiving one, a debrief of the new arrival and then within hours there would be a two-way traffic in operation.

Using his sonic screwdriver to light up the dank hiding-place, he sought and found what he wanted – the tin of sugar used to make tea. The "kettle" still had a little water in, too.

'Excellent!' he beamed to himself. The sugar went into water and he gently began to agitate it with the screwdriver, on a low-frequency infrasonic setting. In less than a minute the brew resembled glue. Carefully contorting himself, the Doctor took off his long overcoat and draped it at full length on the floor of the shelter, before carefully pouring the adhesive syrup on the outer facing of his coat. He rapidly flipped it over and pressed it into the sands, knowing that he had –

a warning siren howled over the complex three times –

- little time remaining. Donning the overcoat, now encrusted with sand, the Doctor crept cautiously out of the shelter, concealing a scarf-wrapped canister under his coat. He lay flat on the sand and crawled towards the trans-mat platform, freezing whenever he heard the sound of approaching webbed feet.

Luck, darkness and his improvised sand-camouflage were with him. Twice aliens stalked nearby on his short but risky journey, yet neither noticed him. He paused to slither close to the platform and pitched the canister underhand, a good bowl that brought it to rest against the nearer trans-mat pylon. The scarf was essential to muffle any sound the metal canister made on landing.

Back across the sands, around the southern side of The Temple, and the Doctor slithered madly until he reached the wooden scaffolding there. He leapt up it, not bothering about concealment now, because time mattered more than stealth.

Remaining deep within the gloom of The Temple's interior, he braced the Webley on his left forearm, squinted down the barrel and carefully squeezed the trigger. A shockingly loud report echoed around the building's pillars, and the scarf-wrapped bundle jumped under the impact of a bullet.

Sounds of alarm came from aliens all across the complex. Ignoring them, the Doctor squeezed the trigger again, aiming slightly above the canister of gas from the camping stove. This shot hit the trans-mat pylon as he intended, sending a brief scattering of sparks into the air – which ignited the vapours streaming from the gas canister. A tremendous bang and flash lit up the platform and the pylon, in the light of which the Doctor could see great chunks of crystalline material fly off the structure, revealing and damaging the complex apparatus beneath the protective layer.

Dropping the Webley and shedding sand grains from his gluey overcoat, he raced to the rear of The Temple, leaping down the steps and onto the empty sands below, before dropping flat and crawling southeast-wards, towards the three separate buildings to the south of the trans-mat. Earlier, whilst the sun still shone into the site, he'd noticed that the excavators avoided getting too close to the walls of the trio of buildings, leaving sand several feet deep around them. He needed to get to that deeper sand for concealment.

Despite his speed and concealment, it was a close-run race. Aliens stamped and ran, in a slightly comical style, around the steps of The Temple, while he snaked across the sands and burrowed into the piles around the middle building of the three. A loud cry went up from The Temple's interior, no doubt as the Webley was discovered. The Doctor dug himself in, grinding down into the sand in order to cover his face, leaving only a small space for his mouth. Dragging a biro from an interior pocket, he stripped out the inner tube and used the outer as a primitive snorkel.

Another yell went up from aliens, muffled by his covering. Providentially, they had found the tracks left by Albert and the Professor and were, suspected the Doctor, following them up to the basin wall.

Predictably, the Detachment Leader was enraged at the damage caused to the Trans-Mat Pylon. The transmission process was impossible to carry out until the damage was assessed and repaired. Several Lead Technicians went over the pylon nervously, keeping one eye on Sorbusa, the other on their equipment.

Sorbusa sent a squad of scouts to sweep the HQ building, and another to scour the entire site. He'd foolishly assumed that there were no locals in the Infiltration Complex and now needed to remedy that. His searchers called in that they had discovered non-bio-vore tracks leading away into the further desert, away from the complex.

'Leave them!' he ordered. 'Maintain a sentry post on the edge of the sand wall.'

One of the Lead Technicians came to report.

'Impulsor circuitry failure, Detachment Leader. Perhaps ten to twelve hours to repair, test and re-seal.'

'Nine hours maximum,' ordered Sorbusa, aware that the technicians always gave themselves leeway with deadlines.

He consoled himself with the satisfied thought that their messenger had gotten through to the homeworld.

Uncharacteristically, he stopped to brood about his far distant and long-departed home. After five thousand years, how would civilisation have fared? Were there still any survivors? Perhaps the trans-mat there only continued to operate on geo-thermal power, long-forgotten by a long-dead race, and this Detachment, on Target Seventeen, were the sole survivors of his race.

The Detachment, after all, had volunteered to remain here, where potential sources of biomorphic energy might proliferate, instead of returning home to a planetary wasteland suffering from terminal biomass decline. Endless vistas of grey dust and sand, from what he remembered. With the emergency plantations struggling to survive in the barrens.

Morbid thoughts.

'Nine hours maximum!' snapped Sorbusa.

Safe beneath his dune, the Doctor remained there until all frantic activity died down, being replaced by more measured action.

Searchers being replaced by patrols. Probably. Time to emerge!

A dark desert night greeted him, stars twinkling down from the heavens, their light nearly lost in the gentle glow that surrounded the newly-activated buildings of the complex.

'Interesting. Geo-thermal, of course. Must be a luminiscent lithic substrate underneath the vitreous overlay,' he chattered quietly to himself. Having definitely established he was alone, the Doctor crept out from his sandy lair, crawling alongside the walls of the building until he reached it's doorway.

Inside lay dark, faintly echoing and empty of aliens.

'Perfect!' grinned the Time Lord, turning to look behind him at the rest of the site. Nobody near. No, they were all mounting patrols or watching the route into the complex, or repairing the trans-mat. How fortunate for him that one-third of the aliens did not emerge from hibernation.

'Door. Door. Door? Door!' he muttered, looking for an internal control that closed the gaping space in the wall. A circular panel high on one side of the inner doorway proved to be the "handle" – one press and the door silently slid from a recess and merged seamlessly with the walls.

Much to the Doctor's delight, the building he chose to investigate turned out to be an information repository and archive combined. Once more a part of the puzzle fell into place for him.

' "Local Time Elapsed Five thousand one hundred and twenty seven years",' he read on the most prominent display, a big flourescent banner nine feet above ground level.

He whistled, impressed. That must be the date when the complex went into operation. No wonder Templeman couldn't determine which terrestrial culture built Makin Al-Jinni! A date like that pre-dated everything but the earliest Nile civilisations, who simply could not have built such a site.

Further inspection showed that the building consisted of a single giant room, around the edges of which were banks of technical equipment, with corresponding display screens set into the walls, nine feet above the ground. Everything seemed to have been constructed from glass, used to seal-in the delicate components within.

'Perhaps this isn't just a case of using local resources. Perhaps their home is rich in silcon dioxide,' the Doctor mused to himself. Having said that, even if only to himself, he needed to look for reference to the alien homeworld.

"Baseline Referential Data" seemed a likely possibility, a banner located on a bank of dusty, angular equipment racks. Pressing the Master Operator switch brought up a three-dimensional display of a world that was not Earth, not at all, instantly recognisable as a different planet. The Doctor squinted at the stellar background, rotated the virtual model, zoomed in and out.

'Say hello Delta Pavonis,' he told the instrument panel. Without access to more sophisticated instruments he couldn't tell with one hundred per cent accuracy that the planet so depicted was in the Pavonis system. The suns looked similar to that here in the Solar System, if redder, and the background star patterns looked right.

The home of these aliens did not look healthy. Vast deserts covered most of the major land-masses, with tiny spots of green dotted about the hinterland. Long, shallow urban areas sprawled along the coastlines, occasionally linked across the desert wastes by roads.

What the Doctor found interesting were the absences – no ports or harbours, nor any signs of marine activity. No airports or aircraft. No satellites or rockets or any orbital activity, either. No launch-pads or landing grounds or spaceports.

Yet this was a sophisticated culture. They had matter transmission technology, and deep-sleep technology, and the ability to create useful – and dangerous – artefacts from plain, humble sand.

'Chicken and egg,' he muttered. 'How did they get here?'

That answer might be delayed. The _why_ was more obvious: these creatures were bio-vores, feeding off the energy of living matter. They had progressively denuded their homeworld of all such sources, reducing it to a lifeless wasteland. Those dots of green on the representative globe must be a kind of plantation project, an attempt to stave off complete ecological collapse.

Why not try moving on to other worlds? Nearer worlds? Earth lay over nineteen light years from the constellation Pavo, and the Doctor knew there were other planets nearer the home of these bio-vores that they could have colonised.

Why not? _Because they could not_. They had no ability to travel between planets by spaceship. Trans-mat, yes, but not spaceship.

'Back to chicken and egg,' he pondered. 'Without space vessels, they couldn't land a trans-mat station on another world.'

Deciding that his luck had lasted long enough, he hurriedly scanned the panels and racks and banks of instruments, making a quick selection.

Listening hard, Albert and the Professor both waited for the shooting to die down and stop. Initially it had helped them, seeing the parachute flares casting a weird light over the desert, and the flashes of gunfire.

They had been lost, gone astray from the track back from Makin Al-Jinni. Albert couldn't quite understand how he'd managed to lose the way so badly. He didn't dare to put the headlights on, not with those monsters stamping around The Temple and their killing machines.

Then the gun battle suddenly erupted in the night, making them both jump with fright.

'Is that another battle with the alien's or their weapons?' asked Albert.

'How on earth should I know!' growled the Professor angrily. 'We'll just have to sit and wait it out until daylight and see what's going on at the depot.'

Without a weapon, he felt like adding, before realising that a Webley revolver had little chance of stopping one of the big glass tank vehicles that had killed Bourgebus. Of all the things to happen to him! Physical proof that intelligent life existed elsewhere in the universe, one of the biggest discoveries ever in the history of the human race, let alone science, and he couldn't communicate the facts anywhere, couldn't research further or –

'Professor!' interrupted Albert, tugging on the other man's arm. 'I asked, what do we do?'

'Eh? Oh, sorry, Albert. My thoughts were a million miles away.' He sighed. 'As I said before, we need to wait and see, and we can't see anything until daylight.'

Albert nodded, then started in alarm as the Professor burst out laughing.

' "A million miles away"! I think I accidentally made a joke!'

The laughter stopped as abruptly as it started.

'Sorry, Albert. I – I think seeing Pierre killed was more of a wrench than I realised.'

The Professor slumped back in his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Albert sighed. The night, he felt, was going to be a long one.

Major Brendrecke swilled down another cup of coffee, laced with cognac. His eyes were tired, his back was tired, his calves were tired, and his mind felt very tired, too. He had worn down a pencil making notations, marking the small-scale maps, drawing in lines for the prospective advance of the Afrika Korps, consulting and drawing up march tables, orders of battle, petrol and diesel consumption rates, ammunition scales, spare part inventories, way points, prospective dumps, on and on and on.

'Enough,' he said to his equally tired assistant, the lanky Swabian captain, Hertz. Their NCO's had long gone to bed.

'Agreed, sir,' said Hertz. He spoke fluent Italian, which was why he was here in Tripoli, instead of manning that border post at the Brenner Pass. 'The General can make big sweeps with his hand over a map, but it's up to us to make them work.'

Brendrecke sighed. True enough! They had to work out how to get the Fifth Light Division and the Fifteenth Panzer Division to El Aghelia, alongside their "gallant Italian allies". Together with ammunition, fuel, spare parts, water, radio interception units, Luftwaffe liaison, artillery, more water, breakdown and recovery teams, a bakery unit – the list was endless. Their Chief of Staff, General Von Dem Borne, wanted results, quickly, and wouldn't accept any excuses if the plans weren't ready on time. Besides which, General Rommel would be breathing down the Chief of Staff's own neck.

The glamour of Africa, eh? Burning the midnight oil in a pokey little flat requisitioned from the Italians. Tripoli's harbour brought the smell of brine and oil to them, dusky and hot. That, at least, was different from home.

'The British aren't moving forward. We can cut around them, outflank them and move south across the desert, the way they cut off the Italians,' commented Brendrecke.

'Please don't mention that in front of the Regio Esercito liaison officer, sir,' asked Hertz, pleadingly. 'It's a huge embarassment to them.'

Brendrecke gave his subordinate an arch look.

'We're not here to support our Fascist allies because they need us to look splendid in a triumphal march, Kapitan. If their toes are tender enough to dislike being stepped upon, it's probably because they spent so long retreating.'

He remembered how the Italians behaved when the Afrika Korps arrived in Tripoli and paraded with the local Italian forces. Respectful silence for the Germans, riotous applause for the Italians. Humbug!

Picking up a pair of dividers, he measure distances across the map.

'I think the Thirty-Third Recon Battalion ought to make the running to this place. Mersa Martuba, way out in the middle of nowhere. From there they can move north or north east against the British lines of communication.'

Kapitan Hertz yawned. Right. Plot and plan to get a thousand men and all their equipment across the desert to a fly-blown speck of nothingness. Nothing would probably come of it, anyway.

Twelve: Moving From A to B to A 

The Doctor skulked across the beaten path between what he now deemed to be scientific buildings. He had just been noseying in an archive, of sorts. Perhaps it was designed to update new arrivals to Earth? Aliens who came via trans-mat from their wasted world, unfamiliar with circumstances here. A refresher course in the wherefore and why. Yet why would they remain uncertain of what they were leaving and where they were going?

Staying any longer in the archive would be unwise; given the bio-vores now patrolling or simply accessing buildings, to remain there would have meant risking discovery.

Fortunately for him, their patrolling was no longer aimed at tracking down the person responsible for damaging the trans-mat. In fact more and more of the bio-vores were working on the damaged pylon, fetching various unfamiliar pieces of equipment from the cuboidal building that had stored their personal weapons and armour.

He headed back to the collapsed canvas hide, glad to see that no webbed footprints led to it, remaining prone in the dark and with his gluey, gritty coat providing protection.

A jerky movement away to his left caught his attention and he paused, trying to discern shape or outline in the dark, almost dismissing it as imagination before seeing an irregular patch of desert move forward in a flapping motion. The peculiar motion happened twice again, and by simple extrapolation the Doctor realised the strange, ungainly object had the same destination as he did – the canvas hide.

By the time he got to the collapsed lip of the screen, the other object became less puzzling – a man hiding beneath a tent cover, scurrying forward a few yards at a time.

Both reached and entered the hide simultaneously.

'Albert!' hissed the Doctor, not happy to see the young man back at the dig and in danger again.

'Doctor!' exclaimed Albert, frightened at the Time Lord's sudden appearance.

'I _do_ hope you have an eminently good reason for returning here, Albert,' scolded the Doctor quietly but intently a few seconds later.

'I do, I do,' insisted Albert. 'The Italians have captured Mersa Martuba. The Professor and I saw the battle. It didn't last long, there were loads of Italians with armoured cars and machine guns and flares.'

'Where is the Professor?' asked the Doctor, suddenly worried. He didn't mention the other person whose fate sent a ripple of worry up his spine: Sarah Jane. She'd been back at the depot, too.

'Oh, he's alright, he's back away in the desert beyond the campsite tents. I asked him to drop me off. We realised if you got out of here then you'd head back to the depot and be captured, maybe even killed, so we needed to warn you.'

The Doctor felt absurdly grateful. Faced with mortal peril, this young man had chosen to return to the dig, to warn a stranger about what he might have walked into. He briefly explained about damaging the alien's trans-mat device.

'So they can't come through from the other end?' asked Albert, seemingly grasping the concept of matter-transmission with impressive speed.

'Not yet. The damage is minor, and repairable. You were able to get in here undetected because so many staff are working on repairs. We have gained a breathing space, nothing more.'

They didn't dare use light in the stuffy little den, so Albert's dejection only came across in his tone.

'Oh. That's not much help, is it?'

'Chin up, old chap!' murmured the Doctor, encouragingly. 'Time is on our side, not theirs. I've viewed their homeworld, you see.'

The concept of motile holographic displays, the location of Delta Pavonis and the bio-vore lifestyle took creative explanation to make sense to Albert. His grasp of the trans-mat enabled him to ask another intelligent question.

'So you can send anything at all via a trans-mat?'

'Well, broadly speaking, Albert. Inorganic matter is easier, and smaller objects obviously require less energy expenditure and computer processing - '

'No, no, that's not – what I meant was, how can they put a trans-mat here in the first place? With a rocket-ship?'

The Doctor pondered over that problem himself.

'From what I've seen, Albert, I doubt that very much. I don't think these aliens have the technology or resources to build rocket-ships.'

The sound of sand being trodden not far away led to their sudden, tense silence. With a regular pattern, the footsteps moved away into the night.

Albert released his breath, feeling a cold sweat all over him. That question about the trans-mat wouldn't go away, like toothache. If they had to deal with over fifty aliens just at this precise moment, how many countless thousands might come through the working trans-mat? From what he understood – which seemed to be far less than this Doctor, who really was most mysterious himself – from what he understood, a trans-mat acted like a doorway. A doorway here on Earth, with another door nineteen light years away, and a person could walk between the two with no lapse of time.

Why, there might be millions of these bio-vores waiting to flood into this world! And these were creatures who had wilfully destroyed their own world and all life on it, even down to the vegetation. What unbridled mayhem might they wreak here on Earth?

'Sorry to keep going on about it, Doctor, but can you send a trans-mat along by trans-mat?'

The Time Lord laughed quietly. The boy was certainly struck by matter-transmission technology!

'No, Albert. One of their restrictions. You have to have a station established before you can send to it, or receive from it.'

Any speculative projection of a trans-mat beam into space would merely end up as dispersed Bhatacharjee radiation, an unfocussed pulse of energy –

'Of course!' he whispered, triumphantly smacking a fist against the sandy floor. 'A mid-point focus! It would all make sense!'

Albert wondered what his companion felt so enthusiastic about. In his mind's eye he could see millions and millions of rapacious alien monsters, devouring whole continents, leeching all energy from the lifeforms on Earth.

Although, he wondered, why hadn't they already arrived? The Doctor's description of the bio-vores homeworld made it sound like a desert wilderness, a hellish environment they'd try to leave behind quickly. For some reason they had instead waited five thousand years before deciding to continue with their attack on Earth.

Alongside him, the Doctor's thoughts ran on similar patterns. He reached a conclusion.

'How convincing can you be, Albert?'

Albert felt nonplussed. Convincing?

'I hope you can be _very_ convincing, Albert, because I want you to return to the Professor and for both of you return to Mersa Martuba.'

'What!' squeaked Albert.

'Albert!' said the Doctor, low-pitched yet affectingly. 'You and the Professor need to return there, and inform whoever holds sway that they will need to contend with the bio-vores in the near future. And ensure that Sarah Jane Smith is hale and hearty.'

At least, he reassured himself, she only faced human foes at present.

Albert drew in a stale, sweaty, clammy lungful of air and asked another

question.

'What – what will you do, Doctor?'

The answer, initially, sounded impossible.

'Do, Albert? Do? Why, I shall travel to the homeworld of these bio-vores! After all, we need to obtain primary data!'

After all, he did need to confirm his theory, if possible. More than that, he must try to negotiate a truce of sorts, if possible. Conflict being hateful to him, he needed to prevent it. If possible!

'You might want to take this as proof,' added the Time Lord, passing over a piece of the alien databank he'd removed, just in case. Albert fumbled in the darkness for a second before grabbing the smooth, rugby-ball shaped object.

'How will you get there! And back?' asked Albert. The Doctor tapped the side of his nose, before realising the gesture was invisible.

'By flying! Now, no more chatter. The next patrol might find this hide. You make your way out first.'

Thirty terrifying minutes later, Albert cowered behind the flapping canvas of a tent at the camp-site. How grateful he was that the moon wasn't full! His transit across the desert had been cautious and frightening.

Now all he had to do was locate the Professor – easily done by following the truck's path over the sands – persuade him to drive into Mersa Martuba, meet with the Italians and convince everyone to join forces against a collection of monsters – no, not monsters, aliens.

Easy! At least, easy compared to what the Doctor was attempting.

The patrolling bio-vores did indeed discover the collapsed canvas hide. By then, however, the Doctor was on the upper level of the Temple with a length of rope taken from the scaffolding.

Timing was everything. The noise of work coming from the damaged pylon had lessened perceptibly, meaning more bio-vores able to inspect their complex for unwelcome local intruders. He had planned, originally, to create handholds in the support columns of the Temple, allowing him to climb upwards easily, if a little slowly.

'Too late for that,' he muttered. Using the sonic screwdriver might give him away, now that the covering noise of work in progress had diminished. Those bio-vores certainly wanted that trans-mat back in action!

To climb the column, he used a technique he'd witnessed in the South Seas, where locals climbed the branchless trunks of coconut palms. The rope went around the full circumference of the pillar, he grasped an end in each hand and pulled it taut, then moved each foot vertically against the column and braced himself. Quickly relaxing the rope and throwing it upwards, he gained six inches, then just as quickly moved his feet upwards. Moving six inches at a time, he slowly moved vertically.

It was far harder than he'd anticipated. Coconut palms, after all, were much thinner than massive basaltic columns. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his arms began to ache and his palms were getting badly chafed. After ten feet, when he began to wonder if this idea would work before he became exhausted, progress became slightly easier – eventually his bounds upwards became eight inches, then twelve.

Ah! he realised, gratefully. The column was starting to taper. His strength was still flagging when he reached the roof, and then he had no choice but to use his sonic screwdriver, clutching the rope single-handedly to make a handhold in the black stone, then another. That was even harder, dangling from a single cavity fifty yards above the ground.

With a desperate heave, he swung himself up and over the edge of the temple roof, onto the flat upper surface, utterly spent. For several minutes he was too tired to move from the edge, even though he lay next to a very long drop. After recuperating, he slowly crawled to a safer position, massaging his arms and breathing in a yoga pattern.

Timing, once again, was critical. So, too, were accurate measurements. Using a telescopic pointer, the Doctor carefully measured the length of the Temple roof, peering slowly over the far end when he came to it, which overlooked the trans-mat platform. 

A few bio-vores were using thermal tools to seal the pylon shut, plating the delicate interior with fused silicon appliques. With a shock, the Doctor realised they had finished repairs already. He had only just made it to the roof in time!

The bio-vores first order of business would be a test-despatch, back to their homeworld. To judge by those aliens vanishing into the nearest scientific station, that despatch would be soon.

Three blasts on the siren, recalled the Time Lord. If he misjudged this, the best he could hope for was serious injury; the worst, instant death at the hands of the aliens. He paced out the correct length on the roof.

Detachment Leader Sorbusa led a dozen technicians onto the trans-mat platform. This time they would go back to Homeworld in force, him with a bodyguard to prevent any "misunderstandings" by superior technical staff.

Privately, he was pleased that the repairs were done in record time; less than seven hours. He was less pleased at the repairs being necessary in any case, from an alien saboteur. The patrols discovered where the alien had hidden, in a specially-camouflaged shelter next to the currently quiescent HQ building. Perhaps he ought to Eviscerate another minor technician, blame them for the lapse in security?

The warning siren blasted out three times. Sorbusa braced himself for the transfer, only to see an instant before transmission took place, and with utter astonishment, an object come flying off the roof of the HQ building and over the platform.

'Stop - '

' - the transfer!' he shouted, the first word uttered on Target World Seventeen, the last two on the reception platform of Homeworld. The object – an alien creature – having been caught in the trans-mat field had come along too, and fell at speed amongst the party of technicians.

The Doctor picked himself up, partially winded. A dozen aliens, bowled over by his airborne arrival, regarded him with undoubted dislike.

'How do you do!' he beamed, reaching for his absent hat to doff it. 'I'm the Doctor!'

His first guess, that the angular momentum of his kinetic displacement wouldn't be transmitted had been proved correct; effectively he'd only fallen twenty feet.

His second guess, that these aliens were completely unfamiliar with the third dimension and airborne travel, also bore fruit: none of them expected him to get to the trans-mat by leaping from the Temple roof.

His third guess, about the test nature of the first transmission, was woefully wrong, and he realised that the instant he cleared the edge of the Temple roof and saw at least a dozen aliens standing on the platform.

'Game of skittles?' he asked, getting to his feet. Keep the bio-vores off-balance, questioning, unsure.

'Seize him!' trumpeted a familiar-looking alien. Clad in helmet and numerous artefacts, this bio-vore seemed to be the leader.

'Detachment Leader?' called one of the now-standing aliens. A note of fear and uncertainty in the voice caused the other aliens to ignore their leader and look about.

Between the treelike bodies of his companions, the Doctor could see more aliens, assembled in force around the receiving trans-mat platform.

'Smaller stature,' he noticed. 'Proboscis kept in a pouch. Well, I suppose fashions have changed over the past five thousand years.'

What surprised him more was that these contemporary aliens didn't seem happy to be visited by their recent ancestors. The reception guards were armed, with what looked like dart-guns, and all were levelled at the new arrivals.

'I think I'm not the only spectre at the feast,' he blithely told the Detachment Leader, who glared back at him. The Detachment Leader might well be an alien, with different modes of expression, but the Doctor recognised a glare when he saw one.

A small group of the smaller aliens stamped onto the platform, issuing pouches for the new arrivals. These were punishment versions, locking at the rear of each torso and preventing the proboscis from being used. One bio-vore tried to protest at this treatment and was instantly shot dead by the guards, dying in a silent storm of black glass darts.

When they came to the Doctor, the guards muttered back and forwards between each other, referring to a superior. They looked him over from head to toes, gestured to each other and shooe'd him away with the dozen arrivals.

They were moved to a giant sled, drawn by several dozen aliens, also wearing the punishment pouch. Once the whole party were aboard, the sled moved off, travelling on a well-worn path over barren sands.

Typically, the Doctor spent his journey looking around. A complex of buildings lay around the trans-mat platform, gradually thinning out into long, low buildings of a plain and utilitarian design. The path lay near a shoreline, which became clearly visible when they left the buildings behind. Acres of slimy weed covered the foreshore, continuing out into the shallows – in fact as far as the Doctor could see. And there were aliens out in the waters just off the beach, busily working. In the hinterland, concealed by haze, great artificial bunkers of immense proportions lay, obscured by blown sands.

Sitting back down, the Doctor chewed at his thumb and worked at what he had witnessed. Looking to either side of the sled, he confirmed a first impression: none of the plantations shown on that virtual globe existed here any longer. No greenery at all, apart from the vast slicks of – algae? – out on the shores.

'Environmental collapse,' he told himself. 'A world on the brink of collapse. A world of wastelands.' Of course! All that mileage of greenery out to sea – oxygen-yielding marine weeds. If not for that, this would be a dead world indeed.

A few of the prisoners in the sled turned to look at him as he spoke. The guards looked at him in complete bafflement.

'Not quite what you expected?' he asked of the apparent leader amongst the prisoners. The bio-vore, who could have easily dismembered the Doctor in a moment, turned to look at the inquisitor.

'No. Homeworld survives, with a strangely changed populace. We of the Detachment are now deemed heretics, throwbacks. Once we were the future of our race. Now – prisoners.'

Taking off his cylindrical helmet, the alien looked out to sea, at the weeds and waves and the workers amongst all of them.

'Prisoners, and heretics beside. We will not be allowed to live long, small alien being.'

The alien looked at the Doctor in alarmingly human fashion.

'You have not been kept alive out of merciful consideration, small alien. Just as we will not be allowed to live, neither will you. Except in your case, interrogation will be the first order of events.'

The Doctor looked over the lifeless deserts that lay away to the west in endless acres.

'Ah, well, _qui sera_, hmm?' He reached into a pocket of his waistcoat. The guards darted anxious glances at him, until he produced a paper bag and offered it to the alien leader now a prisoner.

'Jelly baby?'


	7. Chapter 7

Thirteen: A World to Waste 

Jogging along at a steady pace, the giant sled with it's prisoners crept gradually closer to what seemed at first glance to be a castle, yet which couldn't be. Could it?

'A castle!' declared the Doctor, having initially persuaded himself that he was wrong.

'What might that be?' asked the alien leader, whose name, the Doctor had wheedled out of him, was Sorbusa. However massive his physical presence might be, the alien seemed cowed and timid. Thrown on the defensive, the Doctor supposed. In a brutal culture that didn't tolerate mistakes or the mistaken, Sorbusa was now one of the dispossessed minors he had once lorded over.

'A castle? A castle is a large fortified building designed to provide shelter for it's inhabitants,' rattled off the Doctor. 'A single protected entrance, crenellations, towers at each corner. What a coincidence of architecture!'

Sorbusa merely looked puzzled. One of his detachment leaned closer.

'The guards say it is the residence of Lord Excellency Sur, head of the Warrior caste in this region.'

Quick to pick up parataxic patterns in the bio-vore's face, the Doctor detected more puzzlement.

'A new title to you, eh?' he asked.

'Blast you, alien!' snorted Sorbusa. 'I don't know how you discover these things - '

'Well,' drawled the Doctor, with feigned nonchalance. 'A chap like myself, well-travelled, been around a bit, seen one or two things, gets to know how the locals act and react. And you've never heard of the title "Excellency" before.'

'No,' muttered Sorbusa. True enough. When he left Homeworld there had been no such rank or title. 'A one-syllable name, however, denotes high rank.'

Off to the west, another team of bio-vores were dragging a huge cylinder across the sands. The end facing the team of towers was covered with a series of grilles, structured in layers. Their progress was slow and spasmodic, a token of a hard job and long hours.

'Interesting,' commented the Doctor. 'Some variety of sieve or dredge, I take it?'

'May the devil's wind take you, alien!' snapped Sorbusa, before looking himself and making a muted sound of surprise. 'Yes it is! An Element Sieve. At least that much remains from my time.'

"Element Sieve"? wondered the Doctor. Must be used to extract minerals and metals from the desert sands. Another interesting datum to include in his knowledge of – call it Wasteworld. Metal-poor. Mineral-deficient. And, of course, devoid of any non-aquatic plant life.

'You can call me "The Doctor",' he told Sorbusa. 'Tri-syllabic. Makes me important, but not very.'

'Silence amongst the prisoners!' shouted a guard. 'Silence in the presence of Lord Excellency Sur!'

The sled whispered on it's runners into the inner courtyard of the sprawling alien castle, to be met by more guards, armed and waiting alertly. The Doctor and Sorbusa were separated from the other prisoners, flanked by two bio-vores, another bringing up the rear and a fourth leading the way. They were marched into the castle, along corridors and finally led to a dead end. The leading guard turned to face them, weapon levelled.

'Not even a blindfold?' jibed the Doctor. Sorbusa pointed at the floor. Incised in the gritty surface was a circle.

'A trans-mat into - '

' – a prison cell,' explained the alien, as their surroundings suddenly became a featureless cube only seven feet high, forcing the bio-vore to crouch down.

'Oh, yes, I see. No way in or out. And the floor must be a trans-mat platform itself, to allow the guards to remove us again?'

Sorbusa merely grunted in reply. The Doctor felt a pang of sympathy for the alien. Revived after five millenia asleep, hoping to be received as a hero, and actually under a probably death sentence. He laughed ironically.

'Sorry, not very appropriate, was it?' he explained. 'It's just that I never expected to end up underneath a castle in a dungeon.'

Sorbusa clarified their situation. This cell wasn't underneath the castle, it was hundreds of kilometres away, buried thirty metres under the surface of the deep desert. If they improbably escaped from the prison cell, they would still die.

'Thorough planners, your aristocrats,' commented the Doctor. 'Except it's bad policy to allow more than one prisoner to a cell. It encourages dissent, and information-sharing.'

The bio-vore twisted and peered around the cell.

'Perhaps there is monitoring equipment built into the cell structure. More likely, we prisoners exceed the capacity of the available cells.' The trunk-like torso pivoted to allow Sorbusa to look directly at the Doctor. 'We are stuck here, Thedoctor. Since you are the first alien ever to set foot on Homeworld, perhaps you can inform me about your own world.'

'I wondered when your lack of curiosity would wear off!' chaffed the Doctor. For a good ten minutes he gave an overview of planet Earth, describing the abundant flora and fauna, whilst trying to subtly include the billions of humans, many at this moment in time armed to the teeth and busy waging war.

After he finished, the alien sat silent for what seemed an age, staring into space. Eventually he recalled himself, shaking his body.

'Oh, my apologies, Thedoctor. Your planet's description matches that of our own, ten thousand years ago. Life energy in abundance. Now we are reduced to emergency plantations for oxygen.'

'No wildlife?'

'None at all. Long extinct.'

Finally asking the question that had been nagging at him, the Doctor tried not to be too eager.

'How did this extinction take place?'

The explanation didn't take long. Bio-vores reproduced by asexual fission, the energy derived from living matter helping to create a smaller "bud" from the parent adult, it's genetic material differing from the parent by virtue of the type and amount of energy ingested. The young bio-vore split off and became an individual, able to absorb energy immediately.

A critical population point eight thousand years was attained and passed, with the bio-vore's anarchic society becoming the dominant civilisation and species on Delta Pavonis. With horrifying speed, the planet's animal and plant species became extinct, either being killed directly for their energy or indirectly when their habitats died off. A series of fratricidal wars were fought, with bio-vores killing each other for basic life energies. A formal, strict and authoritarian government structure emerged from the chaos of war. Emergency plantations were instituted, to provide oxygen for the collapsing atmosphere. Vast hibernation dormitories were created, powered by geothermal power, allowing a significant fraction of the population to sleep and thus not need life energy input.

The Infiltration Complex plan had been put forward as a desperate measure to harvest bio-resources from other worlds –

' – difficult without rockets or interplanetary travel,' interrupted the Doctor.

Sorbusa spread his huge hands at the word "rocket", indicating incomprehension. At an encouraging gesture from the Doctor, he continued. The very acme of astronomical research revealed a number of distant worlds within a sphere fifty light years across that could support life, four hundred and twenty-three in all. Without any physical means of transport, the trans-mat Infiltration Complexes were sent out – using gravity lenses at the mid-point of the beam. A gravity lens –

'I know, I know. You use the space-time distortion of a stellar mass within a few radians of your beam to re-focus it at the mid-point. Ingenious!' beamed the Doctor, glad to have his own hypothesis confirmed.

'Your scientific knowledge is formidable, Thedoctor,' admitted Sorbusa. 'Exactly so. Only nineteen Infiltration Complexes could be sent this way.'

'None of which were successful.'

'Not really, no. Our Infiltration Complex on Target Nine did manage to send some biological samples back before being destroyed, we presumed by the native population. The complex on Target Eleven functioned for a week before being destroyed by vulcanism, and found no life on that world. The complex on Target Fourteen arrived on an ice-field and collapsed underneath the polar cap.'

'And on my planet, Earth, your Target Seventeen, the Infiltration Complex landed in a desert, with no indigenous life.'

'We closed down operations and went into hibernation, Thedoctor. Better an endless sleep than a dusty death on Homeworld, we thought.'

How lucky for Earth the Infiltration Complex landed in a barren landscape with no nearby sources of food for the bio-vores! If even one were to be allowed to grow unrestrictedly on Earth, given the super-abundance of energy resources, they would proliferate like a plague, a literal plague. They would kill the entire planet in a matter of years.

Food for thought. The Doctor extrapolated from what Sorbusa told him. "Formal, strict and authoritarian" government, indeed! That was an euphimism for a ruthless planetary dictatorship, established to maintain order at all costs. Doubtless it had led to a stratified society, the scientific one that Sorbusa came from. Matters hadn't rested there, however. No. Whilst the Infiltration Complex on "Target Seventeen" lay dormant, society here on Wasteworld evolved into further stratification. Probably three layers with sub-layers within those.

'Lords, soldiers and peasants,' said the Doctor to the cell walls. 'Self perpetuating neo-feudal fascism – despicable!' he shouted, genuinely annoyed. 'Might is not right!'

The bio-vore looked at his fellow prisoner with bewilderment. Of course might was right! It was the only way! Do unto others before they did unto you, and faster and harder.

Except, mused Sorbusa, that path had led to his imprisonment here.

Perhaps – perhaps there _was_ an alternative.

His Excellency Lord Sur examined the recordings made of the alien prisoner, Thedoctor, in conversation with the heretic throwback Sorbusa. Sur had to admit that the alien had a quick mind and prodigious scientific knowledge.

There were questions raised that Sur wanted answers to. What were "rockets"? Thedoctor also mentioned conflict raging near the Infiltration Complex involving "aircraft". Not only that, there were "fossil fuels" located in that region, which powered vehicles. Powered how? Could a bio-vore subsist on fossil fuel? Sur wanted to know.

First, he put out a summons to the Administrative Auditor. Let that idle rascal earn the energy he leeched off bottled algae daily!

When the Auditor came pattering into the antechamber, Sur indicated the display panels on the walls above his podium.

'Oh! Thirteen prisoners!' exclaimed the Auditor. Three was the norm. Never more than six.

'Auditor Montrudo,' hissed Sur, leaning forward. 'These prisoners are heretical throwbacks from the far past. I want to know if it is legal and permissible to Eviscerate them.'

The Auditor went scuttling back to his scroll-filled room, ready to provide a precedent for the Lord.

'Meantime,' ordered the Lord. 'Bring the alien to me.'

The transition from cell to castle was disorientingly rapid. One second the Doctor was thinking, trying to extrapolate a society and civilisation that had evolved on the desert world of Delta Pavonis, then next he was in a corridor, facing four armed guards.

'Most disruptive,' he scolded them. 'I was having profound thoughts, you know.'

Discreetly, betraying nervousness that the Doctor doubted was due to him, his guards escorted him up and along corridors, reaching a part of the castle that had tapestries on the walls. Subtle geometric patterns graced what must be woven glass fabrics, hanging in great draperies reaching from floor to ceiling. The floor had inlaid clusters of minerals, of which the Doctor recognised haematite and chalcedony. 

This whole part of the castle constituted a display of mineral and manpower wealth designed as status symbols. The Doctor felt sure Excellency Lord Sur considered himself to be of overweening importance.

The design of the inner citadel certainly underlined that impression. The Doctor, as a prisoner, had to walk in a deep trench cut into the floor. This room-long gap was constructed with alien size in mind, and the Time Lord vanished into it completely. His guards remained at floor level, looking down at him anxiously lest he manage to vanish completely whilst under their eyes. Hurried gestures sent him along the trench, feet settling softly on an organic blanket that the Doctor didn't want to look closely at.

An alien wearing what must be a cape stood at the end of the trench.

'Lord Excellency Sur, I presume,' the Doctor began, trying to combine the correct degree of obsequiousness and vigour in his tone, and also not to laugh at the alien, who looked like an amateur dramatics villain.

Sur's tone, however, was anything but uncertain. It was that of a creature used to being obeyed, without the possibility of dissent. Behind it lay the threat of Evisceration.

'Tell me about "rockets",' ordered Sur.

'Invented by the Chinese circa 300 BC, later refined by William Congreve, shortly due to be mounted on the Typhoon aircraft for ground-strafing.'

'Interplanetary rockets,' growled Sur.

'Ah! Yes, shortly to be inaugurated by Werner at Peenemunde. Werner Von Braun. Yes, with the A4 ballistic rocket, using liquid fuel, the space age can be said to have begun. From there the various superpowers on Earth will create fleets of rockets, powered by solid-fuel, that are able to travel beyond the atmosphere and to the Earth's primary satellite. Nuclear-engined models are used – sorry, will be used – to travel to Mars. Earth's nearest neighbour in the Solar System.'

Sur felt that the alien was mocking him. In answering one question he had created others. What was the liquid fuel that rockets used? Nuclear-engines? Aircraft? What might they be? Any connection with the long-extinct air gliders, those creatures now deemed almost mythical?

The Doctor cocked his head to one side, having surely sown the seeds of doubt in the alien's mind.

'Lord Sur, allow me to clarify matters. You don't have fossil fuels on Homeworld?'

Sur considered having the alien punished for temerity, then decided to wait.

'What are these fuels you speak of?'

'The remnants of prehistoric forests, geologically compressed over millions of years into flammable material, retained in the mantle of the planet. The solid form is coal, the liquid is petroleum, the vapourous one is gas. They can be refined for better quality, or to create plastic compounds.'

This was novel, indeed, considered the alien aristocrat.

'We have no such geological heritage. What of the nuclear engine you mentioned?'

Playing for time, the Doctor responded with a query of his own.

'Do you have a periodic table? A table of the basic chemical elements? My answer won't make sense without one.'

Not wanting to seem ill-informed, Sur summoned his Head Technician, who rapidly obtained a periodic table inscribed on a flexible glass sheet the size of a bedspread.

'Circular,' said the Doctor, impressed. 'And also missing many elements. Here, and here, there ought to be a long series of elements called the Lanthanides and Actinides respectively.'

'We have theoretical knowledge of such elements,' explained the Head Technician. 'From spectroscopic analysis of the stars. But they do not exist here on Homeworld.'

Or at least they don't exist on the surface, the Doctor silently chided.

'These elements, particularly Uranium, by virtue of their structure, can be used as fuel in nuclear reactors, to create power. A compact engine of tremendous output can be constructed by using fissile material.'

Looking for confirmation from his Head Technician, Sur discovered that the wretch was looking into the middle distance, doubtless churning over the incredible possibilities of nuclear engines.

'This is possible?' asked the Lord. The technician abruptly recalled himself to the present and gave an emphatic "yes!"

Next the alien pointed at the Doctor and asked the obvious question, one that needed a satisfactory answer.

'Why did you come here, alien? Why did you jump into the trans-mat field? You have not explained that to anyone yet.'

'A chance to travel to another world, naturally,' half-lied the Doctor. If he got the chance to travel to another world, he usually took it, which made it only half a lie. 'I jumped before realising that there were a dozen aliens on the platform already. In hindsight I might have made a slight miscalculation.'

Coughing in a hint that his throat had dried out, the Doctor caught a calculating look from the bio-vore.

'Yes? You want something?'

'A little water wouldn't go amiss,' said the Doctor. 'Nor food.'

At a gesture, attendant guards brought bowls of thick green soup and water. Producing a spoon from the pocket of his waistcoat, the Time Lord amazed and alarmed the watching bio-vores by spooning up the soup, smacking his lips and declaring it to be a trifle bland, but most welcome. The water he sipped slowly, thinking about how the interrogation was going, both from his own point of view and from that of the alien leader.

From one viewpoint, he was like Scheherezade, trying to keep an audience interested by leaving the tale at a cliffhanger, with the cliffhanging element – literally – being his knowledge of advanced scientific techniques. Then, too, he must avoid giving out too much knowledge, for fear that the ruthless aristocrat in front of him would decide that the alien was dispensable.

'Excellency Lord Sur,' he started, bowing low. 'Might I make another request?'

Sur's torso leaned backwards – a gesture of surprise, recognised the Time Lord – and he made a non-commital gesture with his hands.

'I don't know anything about your world. That means I don't have any knowledge of what baseline I am working from. Would it be possible for me to access a library – a data repository?'

'No!' boomed Sur, twirling his cape dramatically. 'You may not, Thedoctor. Guards! Return the alien to his cell!'

Reflectively, pretending to be downcast, the Doctor worked Sur's refusal into the background algorithm he was mentally constructing of Wasteworld and the bio-vore society.

When Thedoctor suddenly reappeared in the cramped underground cell, Sorbusa couldn't physically express his surprise – his size and the low ceiling of the room prevented that.

'You are alive!' he exclaimed, strangely glad that the small, perceptive alien hadn't suffered Evisceration.

'I certainly am,' grumbled the Doctor. 'But I shan't recommend the catering or travel arrangements to my friends!' he shouted. 'Eavesdroppers,' he explained to Sorbusa.

The heretic nodded. He gestured towards a pair of bottles stood upright in a corner, sustenance sent into the cell by trans-mat.

'I saved supplies for later. Would you care for some?'

The Doctor paused and looked piercingly at Sorbusa.

'How very thoughtful. Thank you, but I've already had food.'

Food for the body, he told himself. In the meantime he had mental fodder to digest, and plenty of it.

Fourteen: Shadows from the Past 

Without a watch, the Doctor found it difficult to mark the passage of time in the featureless glass box he and the Detachment Leader were imprisoned in. Subdued lighting generated by the walls allowed him to see, yet was dim enough for him to take a long sleep. The walls possessed an opacity that prevented him from seeing beyond them.

Baulked at any external stimulation, he turned instead to Sorbusa. The big alien remained silent most of the time, occasionally looking at the Doctor, obviously debating internally.

'I take it that your planet is poor in metals and minerals, Sorbusa,' asked the Time Lord of his fellow prisoner. 'Big emphasis on recycling.'

'Yes,' agreed Sorbusa. 'Always. More of a demand now than when I was last here, I would venture.'

'And part of your population hibernates?'

'Correct again. The fraction used to be that twenty per cent of the population remained dormant in hibernation shelters. With the emergency plantations extinct, the proportion now in hibernation may have increased.'

That was a significant datum. Advanced hibernation technology. The ability to sustain millions of bio-vores indefinitely. With a prickling of his scalp, the Doctor began to feel he might have given too much information out to Sur.

'Powered geo-thermally?' asked the Doctor again. 'And how long have you had this technology?'

For millenia. Long ages before the Infiltration Complexes were ever despatched.

'The great stone chambers in the desert are where my people lie,' intoned Sorbusa, sounding almost religious.

"The great stone chambers" sounded like the vast granite sarcophagi seen from the prison sled, those huge structures in the desert depths.

'Have you any idea why Sur would prevent me from accessing data about Waste – sorry, about Homeworld?'

Sorbusa clenched one mighty fist, smacking it against the unyielding surface beneath him.

'May the devil's wind take you, Thedoctor! You never stop asking questions!'

'That's where your civilisation fell into error, Sorbusa,' remonstrated the Doctor, gently. 'You stopped asking questions.'

Little else could have perplexed the bio-vore more completely.

'We stopped asking questions? By the cold and the dark, what do you mean!'

It must have been easy, ignoring the rights of other races, other species, other worlds, to exist; to send out the Infiltration Complexes, to try to strip life from other planets –

'I mean, Sorbusa, that your culture, or the culture of eight thousand years ago, looked for the quick-fix solution. They never asked "how do we maintain this world?" Instead they attempted to export their problem. They never asked "what are the answers in the long term?" Instead they tried to fudge things for today, not tomorrow. They didn't ask "What right have we to take what does not and will not belong to us?" Instead they tried to take regardless. They never asked "Why must we surrender our consciousness and liberty?" Instead they - '

' – acquiesced,' finished the Doctor, startled at being whisked away from his cell so abruptly. He found himself under the guns of a guard quartet, who escorted him away from the spartan trans-mat corridor and into the altogether more luxurious quarters of Lord Excellency Sur.

For this appearance of the prisoner, the aristocrat had adopted a full cloak, and had two other similarly-clad companions sitting on stone benches at either side of him, both looking slightly flustered.

This time the organic matter in the trench, under the Doctor's feet, seemed fresher and crisper than the previous occasion. His attention was on the three bio-vores, but the unpleasant crunching underfoot sounded ominously as if other prisoners had been Eviscerated. One particular footfall hurt his sole, and he struggled to avoid expressing any pain as he walked toward Sur. What could that be?

'Thedoctor! Tell us about "aircraft"!' boomed Sur, expansively, darting a look at the bio-vores to his flanks. 'Not the creature but the construct!'

I am being paraded as a trophy, and a combination of performing monkey and encyclopedia! realised the Time Lord. Did I really tread on a metal object in that dreadful trench?

'There are two varieties of aircraft,' he began, thinking and talking about two different subjects simultaneously, not an easy feat by any means, even for himself. _ A metal artefact from within the body of a bio-vore._ 'Lighter-than-air, and heavier-than-air. Generally, referral to an aircraft is to the latter.' _From a bio-vore of five thousand years ago, when metals were less scarce. _ 'You may consider an aircraft to be an aerodynamic vehicle designed for rapid transit through the atmosphere, both powered and unpowered. In the latter case it is known as a "glider".' _It must be a prosthesis of some kind, an internal implant because all external metallic objects were confiscated from the prisoners. _'Powered aircraft may utilise propellers or jet engines, the latter giving much greater performance at the cost of increased complexity and fuel requirements.' _A prosthesis that was robust enough not to deform under his weight, which must mean a limb support._

A strategic pause. For one thing, the three aliens were conferring. Another concept difficult for them to understand?

Strike while the iron is hot!

'Lord Excellency Sur, may I put a proposition to you?' asked the Doctor. Sur, busy hob-nobbing with his cronies, merely waved a hand. 'Why begin a war in which millions on either side will die? Planet Earth has flora and fauna with which you could re-populate your world, and I know reclamation techniques that could roll back the deserts - '

'_Silence!_' shrieked Sur, bounding upright and looming threateningly close with his proboscis. 'Insolent animal! Earth will be our larder and storehouse combined. From it we will reap the necessary resources to achieve interplanetary conquest. Conquest, alien, conquest, not petty co-operation!'

'Your peculiar little pet is not properly trained, Sur,' joked one of the other aristocrats. Sur looked to be on the verge of attacking the Doctor, but restrained himself.

'Take this one back to his cell,' he ordered, turning back to the other two bio-vores. He watched a dejected Thedoctor stumble back up the trench, under the guard's watchful eyes.

'I apologise that you needed to suffer this alien's insolence. It will not last long.'

Nastily ambiguous! Not until I've given up what scientific knowledge I have! and that won't happen even if I have to die first, the Doctor angrily told himself, also exulting silently at what he had found.

Left in isolation, Sorbusa sipped at a bottle of water and looked at his situation.

Not rosy. He was deemed a heretic, for reasons that completely escaped him at present. Imprisoned, in one of the cells of an aristocrat who would doubtless Eviscerate him at the first chance.

Might was not right? He may have scoffed at that new, amended phrase twelve hours ago, when he firmly believed might was as right as right got. Sitting here in a cell, waiting to die, rather altered one's perspective.

Detachment Leader Sorbusa of yesterday, who boldly ordered the harvesting of local biomass resources, who Eviscerated minions deemed a threat, seemed to be another being altogether. The dispossessed Sorbusa of today, experiencing what the Longer Names must endure daily – well, he wasn't the self-assured arrogant monster of yesterday.

What alternative existed to turning another world into a surrogate Homeworld, full of barren deserts and salt-flat wastes?

Thedoctor seemed to have ideas for alternatives. A single alien. How could a single alien know what the whole Technician society of five thousand years ago did not know? Or, for that matter, what the current bizarre society knew?

Sorbusa felt as if his old view of the world had been shattered, broken into a thousand pieces. He held those thousand pieces in a mental limbo; he could remake them into any picture he cared to, to explain where and how he found himself.

'Ooof!'exclaimed the Doctor, landing indelicately in the underground cell. 'You know, I think I rather rattled old Lord Excellency Sur, talking to you about alternatives.'

Sorbusa looked over at his fellow-prisoner, indicating the bottles in a corner. Politely, the Doctor refused.

'We already presumed that the guards can listen in to our conversation, Thedoctor.'

'I meant that his guests looked as if they'd been hurried to the meeting to gloat over me. He didn't like the course our conversation was taking.'

What had the subject been? Oh, yes, hibernation for a fifth of the population. A willing surrender of liberty. Allowing the technicians to dominate the bio-vore culture, what remained of it. And then the evolution of the aristocracy, the Warrior culture.

The Doctor and Sorbusa were struck by the same idea simultaneously. They turned to each other, Sorbusa gesturing for silence and the Doctor reaching for a blank page in his 750 year diary.

"Could the aristocrats use hibernation to extend their rule?" scribbled the Doctor. Sorbusa nodded in agreement. He picked up the pencil, which he found awkward in his massive hand.

"The aristocrats may hibernate to prolong their lives".

The Doctor whistled at the sudden insight this gave him.

'How long does your species live for, Sorbusa? I see. Approximately two hundred years.'

What perfect sense it would make! A way to extend their reign over millenia; hibernate for ten years, emerge for one, then back into hibernation again, extending their lifespan to thousands of years. Select a small number of hibernating bio-vores to serve as Warriors, Overseers, administrators and so on. Use the remaining population to keep the planet alive, barely, with the constant threat of death to keep them in line. Increase the percentage of hibernating bio-vores to eighty per cent, to allow the rulers to keep their subjects in obedient servitude.

'A self-sustaining slave-state,' muttered the Doctor, not happy or impressed. To take his mind off that problem, he started talking aloud to Sorbusa.

'Not feeling too hot, are you? No, I didn't think so. Neither of us are gasping for breath, either, are we?'

The big alien looked around, paying close attention to the cell for the first time.

'Correct. A cell this small would have it's oxygen consumed very quickly.'

Then the air was being exchanged via trans-mat. Nice, cool, static air. Non-desert air. Air from a controlled environment.

An idea began to form in the Doctor's mind, beginning small. Small, yet with prospects.

A hundred and fourteen trillion miles away, Assault Leader Ihouda took careful stock of the situation in the Infiltration Complex.

Of the thirty-nine person garrison of heretics; prisoners, six; fatalaties; thirty-three.

Of the four-hundred strong Assault Detachment; fatalaties, fourteen; injured, five.

Not a bad result, he considered. They had come storming out of the trans-mat, in two waves each two hundred strong. Most of the heretic garrison were overwhelmed straight away, taken by surprise initially and then bewildered that their fellow bio-vores were attacking them.

Once the surprise wore off, there had been a few short skirmishes. Using stunners in defence, the heretics fell back to their armoury, Eviscerating any immobilised attackers they came across. It took a co-ordinated assault to storm the armoury and kill the remaining handful of heretics, and their greater size and physical strength caused most of the fatalities amongst the Assault Detachment.

Ihouda summoned the Sub-Leaders.

'Eviscerate all prisoners and wounded. Send a messenger back to Homeworld informing of success. Establish what the Factory unit has been programmed to produce. Locate local bio-mass resources.'

He looked around the Infiltration Complex again, wondering when daylight would arrive. You didn't know with these Target worlds, and he felt more vulnerable in the darkness. Then there was the immense nearby satellite, which cast a faint light over the sands. Homeworld did not possess such a moon. The novelty of the nearby orbiting body caused many of the Assault Detachment to look over their shoulders warily, feeling under observation.

Lord Excellency Sur felt uneasy.

Not at the current state of things on Target World Seventeen. No, that was highly satisfactory. All the heretics dead, on a par with their Eviscerated comrade's remains lying in the approach trench of his audience hall. No locals aware of the presence of bio-vores. The prospect of a whole world to plunder.

No, what made him uneasy was the diminution in conversation between Thedoctor and the heretic Sorbusa. That damnable alien was alarmingly perceptive and well-informed, able to make unpleasantly accurate guesses about Homeworld's history. What might he not conclude, egged on and informed by the heretic? The only reason Sorbusa remained alive was because he could, unwittingly, draw information out of the alien. Unfortunately resources didn't allow vision in addition to sound; there hadn't been enough time to adapt the cell.

Yet now they were hardly talking! Could they suspect the truth about their prison? No, impossible. The cells were –

" – directly underneath Sur's castle," wrote the Doctor in his diary.

'I'm afraid all your companions are dead,' he said aloud. Sorbusa read the Doctor's notes and stared.

'Yes. I expected as much. Soon my turn will come.' "How do you know?" he wrote, slowly and awkwardly.

The Doctor tapped the side of his nose, grinning. A series of logical deductions. The cells used trans-mat technology, but were far too small to utilise geo-thermal power as an energy source. Ergo, they were part of a larger complex. The air present in the cells came from an air-conditioned environment, swapped through on a regular basis. Ergo, and using Occam's Razor, they were underneath the castle. Still grinning, he produced a length of metal, as thick as the pencil and as long as his forearm, from beneath his shirtsleeve. The grin vanished.

"Proof your companions are dead. And our means of escape." he wrote. Using the pencil, which left a faint trace on the cell roof, he sketched a cross in the middle of the featureless glassy expanse, then mimed to Sorbusa. The big alien picked up the metal prosthetic, recognising it as an upper armbone replacement, and swiftly snapped it in two. Using the now-sharp ends, he scored at the pencilled cross and rapidly scraped narrow grooves in the glass, drawing a horrid screeching noise from the ceiling whilst doing so. The Doctor handed him a handkerchief, which Sorbusa wrapped around one massive fist before punching at the cell roof.

It took three blows before the glass panel cracked and split, great sudden jagged gaps suddenly shearing across the roof, hot gritty air suddenly flooding over them. The Doctor dragged Sorbusa back, away from the sudden cascade of shattered glass falling into the cell as the roof fell in, creating a storm of splinters, rapidly stilled by an avalanche of hot sands. Bright natural illumination blinded them for whole seconds.

The prisoners looked up into the dry blue skies of Homeworld, from a vantage point below ground level, in a quadrangle of buildings. Sorbusa boosted the Doctor clear of the cell's ruins, throwing him clear into the sand outside, to follow with a tremendous leap that only just cleared the dangerously sharp edges of their former prison. The heretic could manage the feat; his current brethren would not have been able to manage, with their smaller stature.

'Come on!' hissed the Doctor with urgency. 'Those sounds may have alerted Sur.'

'Where do we travel to?' asked Sorbusa.

'The trans-mat platform we arrived on.'

Sorbusa managed the backward bend of surprise very well in the open.

'Do lead on,' he said, concealing any other emotion. Thedoctor took his co-operation for granted, apparently. Not a misguided assumption. Sorbusa recognised that his stature, let alone his heretic status, meant he would instantly stand out from the local population. They would rapidly discover who and what he was and then they would kill him. Why not try to escape such a fate, and – the concept of "might is _not_ right" – somehow that idea just wouldn't go away.

Their escape felt a little anti-climactic. No sirens sounded, no Warriors scrambled to intercept them, no patrols scoured the desert wastes. At the urging of the Doctor, they both headed for the shoreline and the wastes of weeds there.

'High-yield algae,' explained the Doctor. 'Not native. I – urk!' and he dived underneath the green slimy slick when bio-vores moved along the shores, only emerging when the landscapes were deserted again.

'Oh – hello there,' he blithely began. Sorbusa turned slightly to discover a group of reticent bio-vores regarding himself and the alien with interest. 'You must be the local peasant population. How d'you do – I'm the Doctor, and this is Sorbusa.'

The Time Lord looked at the timid bio-vores very intently. A group of three, they seemed disposed to run away instead of attacking or arresting the two fugitives.

'We are not hostile,' explained Sorbusa.

'We are, however, escaping from Lord Excellency Sur,' added the Doctor, to Sorbusa's silent dismay. 'We don't like him very much. We don't like the Warriors, either.' He threw a jelly-baby to one of the watchers, underhand, allowing the alien to catch it easily, snatching it from mid-air with his proboscis. 'In fact you could tell your fellow peasants that the time of the Warriors is coming to an end.'

Without saying anything, the three farmers withdrew, keeping watchful eyes on both fugitives, moving away into deeper waters, taking up creels and nets and poles.

'That went well!' beamed the Doctor to the air and his companion. Sorbusa slowed to look sideways at his companion, slopping up a small crest of green water.

' "Well"? You told them who we are and what we are doing!'

Once again the Doctor tapped the side of his nose, grinning.

'Did they try to kill us, or stop us? Or alert the Warriors undoubtedly searching for us? No, they did not, for the very good reason that they hate and detest their masters more than you or I could begin to imagine.'

Oh, thought Sorbusa. As a former ruler, I'm being helped by people who hate rulers. And why do they hate their rulers? Because their lives mean nothing to the rulers.

'Come along, Thedoctor. We can approach the trans-mat from the sea unsuspected. Then it is but a short distance to the platform. Can you operate it?'

The Time Lord rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.

'Can I? Can I!'


	8. Chapter 8

Fifteen: Unexpected Arrivals 

Dominione cast an uncomprehending and worried eye over the shattered remnants of the "Black Tank", keeping an equally watchful eye on Sarah Smith. Eventually he had the woman detained and the tank destroyed.

The attack on Mersa Martubah had been entirely successful. Of the much-reduced garrison, only a Lieutenant and a couple of enlisted men remained. His own Camionista's suffered only a few superficial wounds, just revenge for their humiliation earlier that year.

One of the drivers, bringing a Sahariana along the main route amongst the vast supply pyramids, had discovered a small, recently-dug graveyard behind a cluster of mud huts. British and Italians buried alongside each other.

Then, more worryingly, smashed remnants of the bizarre vehicles that mad Englishwoman had ranted on about were discovered. A hectare of black glass fragments, surrounding a knocked-out British tank; a very badly-damaged vehicle amongst the supply stacks; a mostly-intact black tankette on the main track.

Dominione frowned deeply when he examined the latter. The British had shot it with armour-piercing bullets, smashing the hull armour, and battering the insides to bits, yet enough remained for him to realise it definitely wasn't from the Regio Esercito, nor the Wehrmacht, nor the British either. Given the complexity of the vehicle's interior, with what might well be an advanced electric-brain, - given that, Dominione's skin crawled when he wondered if the whole wretched device was even the product of human ingenuity.

Sarah Smith, obviously, pointed out the Martian origins of the Black Tanks. Dominione, sighing, had her put in one of the mud huts with plenty of water and an examination by the medical orderly. He regretted removing her gag, out of gentlemanly regard.

The surviving British soldiers were equally demented. The officer, Lieutenant Llewellyn, whose name none of the Italians could pronounce properly, vigorously endorsed Sarah Smith's story: black glass vehicles that killed with a single touch and could only be defeated by armour-piercing ammunition. Corporal Mickleborough only gave his name, unit and number, and thanks to his peculiar accent the Tenente felt grateful that was all they got from him. Private Menzies might as well have been from Mars, since his Scottish accent prevented anyone from understanding him. Caporale Balduccio merely smiled and shrugged when the Tenente asked for a translation. 

Still, their stories all tallied once written down. Peculiar black vehicles had emerged from the desert and attacked the Mersa Martuba garrison and prisoners, and J Force too. The pocket cemetery proved their point.

Very well. Here the Camionistas were, masters of the land. Avengers of Tenth Army's humiliation the previous month. The big question was, what to do next?

Dominione knew that the Germans were liable to sweep across this stretch of the desert in a few weeks, if that long. The temptation to make sure they understood that the Regio Esercito had been this way already, successfully, was hard to resist.

Then, as if all this was not enough, one of the scouts sent word to him that there was a strange light in the sky off to the south-east. The Tenente left his command car with bad grace, cursing a look-out who didn't know one desert phenomenon from another. He needed to climb a ladder that led to the upper reaches of one of the mud huts that gave this dismal place it's name. Once up there the silent sentry pointed out over the desert.

Over to the south-east, many kilometres away in the unlit, unoccupied depths of the desert, a pale light shone into the sky. Pearly, diffuse and unvarying in intensity, it had the quality of a city's lights seen after dark.

'There's no town out there, is there, sir?' asked the worried sentry.

Dominione paused before answering.

'Of course not! Merely a trick of the light. A mirage or static discharge.' He hoped his voice didn't mirror the confusion and alarm he felt.

Damn! That madwoman Smith claimed the killer infernal devices came from the direction of those lights. She simply could _no_t be right.

Feeling only very slightly foolish, the Tenente gave orders for three of the big desert cars to patrol around Mersa Martuba. His orders were to maintain strict radio silence at all times; under no circumstances was he to call Tenth Army HQ, unless he came across General Wavell and captured him! A reconaissance flight would confirm that the Camionista had taken Mersa Martuba by noon the following day.

Dejected and sad, Sarah sat on the warped wooden desk that Captain Dobie had used, only able to see the three garrison survivors by the light of passing vehicles traversing the main path outside. They came by regularly, headlights shining through the slatted blinds, illuminating the dusty, musty room for half a minute at a time.

Still no sign of the Doctor. Gone for hours, without a trace. Surely nothing serious had happened to him? After all, the dig was now safe.

Safe! So was she, here, here and now. The bodies of the dead British soldiers were lying outside, behind this very hut, Captain Dobie amongst them. He had been shot down after refusing to surrender, taking on two Saharianas with his pistol. Caporale Balduccio, the fluent English-speaker, had escorted Sarah past the Captain's body, tutting and sighing.

'Are ye alright, Miss?' asked Davey, his Scottish accent full of perceptible worry on Sarah's behalf. 'I can hear you greeting, lass.'

Sarah bit her tongue, ashamed that her worry had been apparent and obvious. How dare she be so self-obsessed! These men had seen their comrades killed in front of them, and instead of self-pity, they were worrying about her!

'I – I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, thanks. I'm alright now. Just worried about what might have happened to the Doctor. Doctor John Smith.'

'Oh, he's safely out of the way,' assured Roger. 'Entirely out of harm's way at the dig. There's no Italians there.'

The Italian sentry at the door opened it, leaned in and ordered "Silencio!" loudly, before darting back outside again.

'Hey! He's worried about something,' whispered Tam Mickleborough.

Sarah, comprehending thanks to her TARDIS-inherited ability to understand Italian, rapidly understood that there were enemies approaching the depot from the direction of Makin Al Jinni.

Tenente Dominione wondered if the whole God-forsaken world wasn't going mad whilst he alone stayed sane. One of the cars on patrol had intercepted a British army lorry driving towards the depot. Except this lorry wasn't driving along normally with it's lights on, not expecting trouble. No. Nor was it sneaking along with lights extinguished, expecting trouble. Oh no. Instead it was flashing headlights as if it wanted to attract attention.

Now he had the drivers in front of him, a big middle-aged academic and a twitchy undergraduate. They told a story, different this time to the tales related by the Martuba garrison, of monsters emerging from the archaeological dig at Makin Al Jinni.

Monsters! He jumped down from the command car, stretching his legs and working off some of the frustration he felt.

'Summon Balduccio!' snarled the Tenente. 'I need this nonsense made clear for what it is – nonsense!'

When Caporale Balduccio completed the interrogation nobody felt any the wiser. The British undergraduate, Albert, displayed considerable vehemence in his insistence that the aliens were going to come and attack the garrison – for their blood, from what Dominione could make out. Albert put across the idea that everyone should declare a truce and bond together as allies. The big academic, Templeman, haltingly told how his fellow-academic Bourgebus had been killed by one of the Black Tanks.

Dominione shrugged his shoulders and felt his flesh creep at the dispassionate recounting by the older man. A companion shrivelled into nothingness.

Which, recalled Dominione, is just what the British survivors and Sarah Smith had said.

'You are lying!' he accused, via Balduccio.

'You are merely picking on me because of my Hebrew ancestry,' replied Templeman, with enormous assumed dignity and hurt.

'He thinks you're a Nazi, sir,' translated Balduccio. 'You know, hate the Jews, blame them, everything's their fault.'

'I am picking on you, sir, because you are _a complete raving lunatic_!' barked Dominione. 'Blood of the saints, get them into that hut with the other madmen. And madwoman.'

He plucked a sledgehammer from the side of the Sahariana and strode over to the wrecked Black Tank, taking his annoyance out on the friable vehicle until he stood ankle deep in black fragments.

The three British soldiers and Sarah were hugely pleased to meet other British survivors, less pleased to hear about the resurgent aliens at Makin Al Jinni, and both alarmed and inspired by the Doctor's declared intent.

'Doctor Smith seems both headstrong and – I don't know how to put this – excessively well-informed? about these monsters, Miss Smith,' observed Roger.

'You don't need to worry about him betraying or selling you out,' replied Sarah snappily. 'He would never do that. Never!'

Her insistence came from long experience, in the most dire situations imaginable. How easy it would have been for the Doctor – and her and Harry - to simply have abandoned Space Station Nerva and left it to the Wirrn. Instead he had put his life in mortal peril, repeatedly, to help humans. And why did the Doctor exist in this particular incarnation? Because he had helped the humans of Metebelis Three escape the thrall of their arachnid slave-masters, at the cost of his own life. Nearly.

'I quite agree,' said Albert. 'Even if nobody asked me. I trust him.'

'So, you warned the Eyeties about what's going to happen, and they didn't belive you?' asked Roger. Both Albert and the Professor shook their heads.

'They are pretty nervous,' concluded Albert. 'Considering they've captured the depot with hardly a casualty, no British nearby and no alarm raised. There are three armoured cars patrolling the perimeter at all times, and sentries on all the high points.'

Sarah drew her legs up under her, thinking.Maybe the Italian lieutenant didn't believe what he'd been told, maybe he did. Whatever, he knew that strange events were afoot in the desert.

'We have to be ready,' declared Sarah, trying to sound determined whilst remaining quiet. 'Because those aliens will attack us here. The Italians might not believe it, but I do, and you ought to, too.'

Roger looked up at the ferociously determined young woman and felt a smile spread over his features, despite the seriousness of his circumstances.

'Very well, Miss Smith, what do you suggest we do?'

Sarah picked up a divider from the desk and brandished it like a baton.

'We start with this!'

Sitting inside the mud hut allowed them the luxury of watching the desert dawn arrive. The uniform blackness outside became uniformly grey. Major objects and landscape contours began to differentiate, slowly. A sliver of sun poked above the horizon and initiated dawn, a brief display of fantastic golds, yellows, fawns, tan and browns that lasted until daylight, abrupt and radiant, arrived. In the mud hut darkness became greyness, which became daylight, all in the space of seconds.

'Fiat lux,' muttered Albert, both arms and hands aching after his stint with the divider. Now they could see more clearly the damage done, and he had to admit, the hours of quiet, patient work had made a big impression.

'Let there be light,' agreed Roger. 'So far, Miss Smith, we have a big fat nothing to report. No aliens, no black tanks, no attack.'

Outside, a siren began to shriek, the one previously used by the British garrison to announce unwelcome intruders.

Sarah looked at Lieutenant Llewellyn, raising her eyebrows.

'You were saying?'

From outside came the shouting of alarmed voices in Italian, engines revving, sporadic gunfire and running footsteps.

Dominione was roused from a well-deserved sleep by the urgent hand of a sentry, shaking him. For an instant he lunged at the man, seeking to grasp and crush the windpipe to prevent the alarm being raised –

'What's going on?' he asked, thickly, regaining his sense of place and realising that the siren overhead was being cranked.

'Sir!' blurted the sentry. 'Enemy motor transport approaching!'

The Tenente lurched upright from his seat, rubbing his eyes. He leaned over the back of his seat and threw open the old ammunition box that held his flare gun, cocked it and fired a red flare.

Crews came out of the few huts where they had sheltered from the chilly desert night, whilst drivers started and revved engines. The Tenente raced up the ladder to the observation platform he'd been watching from last night, seeing a dozen black vehicles heading over the desert gravel directly at Mersa Martuba. Motor transport? They looked more like tanks, tracked vehicles at least.

'Binoculars – and you can stop making that hideous noise!' he snapped at the sentry, who sheepishly stopped cranking and passed over binoculars looted from the British. 'Get down to your Section.'

These vehicles were much larger than their destroyed relatives lying around the depot, and sported a large, shallow turret on top of a big, boxy hull, the whole thing easily as big as a Fiat 10-tonne truck. Because of the angle they were approaching from, he couldn't see if there were any gun barrels projecting from the turrets.

Sections One, Two and Three were already heading away to spread out over the desert, making a less obvious target than if they had been concentrated together in Mersa Martuba. Caporale Pontecorvo's Sahariana in Section One lagged behind the other three cars of the section, indicating the engine trouble the vehicle experienced whilst they crossed the desert earlier was not repaired.

Dominione chewed anxiously at a fingernail, wishing that they had brought along heavier weapons than the Breda cannon. Those black tank-like vehicles might be armoured.

'Keep moving,' muttered the officer, knowing that his men's survival lay in remaining mobile and presenting difficult-to-hit targets. 'Keep moving, keep moving.'

Section One collectively stopped moving, one car driving round in a circle and hitting a boulder that stopped it, the other two slowing down and halting. A soldier fell out of one car.

The laggardly fourth vehicle stopped, too, except that in it's case caution dictated the halt. Dominione could see the flash of it's twin machine guns firing, and the streak of tracers zipping towards one of the approaching tanks. Several rounds hit, until the rounds suddenly went up vertically and stopped, and the gunner fell backwards into his seat.

Dominione looked back at the slowly advancing tanks, realising that the turrets did indeed mount a short barrelled weapon, which were now pointing at Section One. Not a sound of firing, yet his men were – dead? Unconscious?

Section Two made a flank attack, which managed to immobilise one black tank when twenty-millimetre cannon rounds hit the tracks, shattering them apart. Once again the silent weaponry of the black tanks turned against the Camionista, and Section Two fell senseless in their cars.

Discretion bettering valour, Section Three reversed out of trouble, one car firing non-stop as they left at speed, throwing up dust clouds that concealed the oncoming enemy. Despite retreating so quickly, one car still drifted away from the depot, the driver leaning over the wheel and nearly falling out, until the Sahariana stalled.

The remaining three cars from Section Three roared into the main route of the depot, the crews ashen-faced.

'What's happening!' asked a driver, bewildered.

The officer worked out what forces he had left: seven cars and twenty two men including himself. Eleven of the big hostile vehicles approaching, armed with weapons he didn't understand. Given their size, probably carrying either more, smaller machines or – or monstrous crewmen.

'We ambush them,' ordered Dominione. 'Back your vehicles into the aisles here and over there. Driver, get your car over behind that stack of crates.'

He positioned the other three cars along more of the axes amongst the supply piles, reasoning that the physical obstructions would prevent the ambushers from being seen.

The last car, his own, would be the bait, positioned at the end of the beaten path, daring the enemy to advance.

'Heave!' whispered Sarah, trying to keep quiet in the silence left when the nearby siren stopped wailing. The five men holding up the weighty wooden desk glared at her, then swung their burden back again. Professor Templeman, less fit that the other four, pushed from the back and the desk connected with the rear wall of the hut, making a dull thud and shaking the wall. Lumps of mud fell from the deeply-incised circle and cross that the prisoners had scraped away with the divider.

'Again!' whispered Sarah, drawing more glares. 'Put a bit of effort into it, Professor!'

This time an inch-wide crack appeared in the wall, and the next blow to land dislodged a great fragmented mass of mud and straw. Not big enough to escape by, so they enlarged it with well-aimed kicks. The wall was friable, ancient and untended, and it split apart once it's integrity had gone.

Dusty, tired and now free in daylight, Roger led them across the depot, dodging amongst piles of supplies, aiming for the truck park. A distant crackle of gunfire came to them, spurring them on.

Sarah felt conflicting emotions: gratitude at having escaped, worry that the Doctor still hadn't returned.

'That Bedford,' whispered Roger. 'I've got keys for it.' Before climbing in, he sent them to scrounge in the other trucks. Pickings were poor: two canteens of water, a four gallon flimsy nearly full of petrol, a tin of stew and a tin of sardines in oil.

'We could make soup,' joked Sarah, climbing in the cab beside Roger. 'I know, I know,' she admitted. 'But I can guide you to cover.'

Nobody tried to stop them leaving the depot. Sarah assumed the Italians were too busy dealing with the approaching aliens to bother about five unarmed prisoners. Unexpectedly, she found herself hoping the Italians survived. Yes, they were the enemy, had taken her prisoner, and gagged her, and practically undressed her with their eyes, but they were still human beings.

Sixteen: The Battle Lost 

Dominione stood on the bonnet of his Sahariana, on top of the spare tyre, peering down the beaten path. Yes, there sat one of the sinister – that word sprang to mind, "sinister" – black vehicles. The depot blocked the rest from view.

Standing out here in the open was a calculated risk, of course. The range of those silent, invisible ray guns was unknown.

Ah! Now a second black tank drew up behind the first, and a third behind the second.

'An embarassment of riches,' he muttered to himself. Curious muted clinkings came from the rear of the Sahariana, making the officer turn and frown.

'Sergente, are you drinking _beer_?' he asked, angrily. The swarthy NCO shook his head, flipped the cap off another bottle of liberated British beer and poured it over the side of the car, into the sands.

'No, sir.' Capriccio picked up a petrol can and poured the liquid into four empty beer bottles, which were already partly-filled with axle grease. 'These are special cocktails.' Using rags, he plugged the top of each bottle, leaving a long dangling strip of rag, then shook them, creating a nasty chemical slurry. 'Molotov cocktails. Learnt to make 'em in Spain, sir.'

Petrol bombs! realised Dominione.

'We won't be close enough to use those. I hope.'

He strode backwards over the car, giving a nod to the gunner, who sternly fired at the lead black vehicle. As if aggravated by such insolence, the huge glassy thing began to move slowly forward.

Soldato Pretoro, sweating so much he didn't think there was any liquid left in his body, squinted down the sights of the Breda twenty-millimetre cannon. The combination of sweat and sand made him feel as if his uniform was composed of sandpaper; the slightest movement grated on his skin Every few seconds he brushed his brow, preventing perspiration from getting into his eyes.

Who and what were they fighting! The First and Second Sections had been wiped out without so much as a single shot being fired.

Pretoro wiped his left temple again, listening intently. Yes, a heavy crunching sound came from the left. The kind of sound tanks made on desert ground when travelling slowly. Across the beaten path of the supply depot's main road he saw another Sahariana, from the reserve unit, Fourth Section. Only armed with a Fiat machine gun. The driver looked pale and anxious.

Pretoro darted a look at Bartolomei, his assistant. Bartolomei held two magazines of ammunition for the cannon, and displayed an idiotic grin.

Stupid Neapolitan peasant! raged Pretoro, for all of a second. Then the glossy glassy hull of the enemy tank moved across his field of vision, fractionally later than that of the crew opposite him. The hammering of a machine gun sounded, with the high-pitched crack and whine of ricochets.

Atop the enemy hull, a turret rotated to point at the firing Sahariana from Fourth Section, and the machine gun fell silent.

Closing one eye, Pretoro aimed slightly under the half-way mark of the featureless massive vehicle hull, starting at the rear, swivelling the Breda to follow his point of view, hearing the ill-oiled bearings squeak in protest. Thin wisps of dust blew up around the strange, squashed tracks that the vehicle use to move about on. He could see individual pebbles in the path, about to be crushed –

He pulled the trigger, shuddering at the noise and recoil, dragging the cannon around to the right and seeing the rounds smack into the target without bouncing off.

'Ammo!' he yelled as the bolt fell on an empty chamber. Bartolomei yanked the empty magazine out, put a new on in place and slammed it home with the heel of his palm. Pretoro cocked the cannon again, firing the rounds at the front of the vehicle. It didn't move again.

'Reverse!' he shouted at the driver, banging on the man's helmet. The big desert car jerked into motion, but too slowly. The second black tank smashed into the rear of the first, shoving it forward brutally, allowing enough room for the silent and deadly ray gun to do it's work.

Tenente Dominione bit his thumb longwise, squeezing it hard and making blood run onto the front of his uniform without noticing.

Pretoro and Costanzo between them had forced the first enemy tank to a halt. In fact, Pretoro's cannon seemed to have done damage to the monsters and their sinister carriage. It no longer moved.

On the debit side of the exchange, neither of the two car's occupants were still conscious.

Movement at the side of the stalled enemy vehicle caught his eye and attention. Big figures, bigger than any human, filed out of the motionless tank. Three metres tall, at least.

Soldiers. Hung about with that amount of gear, harnessed like that, moving in disciplined columns, they had to be soldiers. Several were obviously wounded, victims of gunfire that had penetrated the side of their transport. Good!

Alongside one of the stacks of supplies, Dominione also caught another flurry of movement. What in the name of the Holy Virgin was that?

Sergente Cappricio! Twisting to look at the rear of the command car revealed a lack of Cappricio.

Briefly and absurdly Dominione wondered if the NCO hadn't gone to the aliens to surrender to them and betray the plan, for what it was.

No, of course not. A small fiery spark soared into the air from where the NCO stood, arcing over piles of supplies to land in the depot's stores, followed by another, which broke on the immobilised first tank, and another and the last one, which broke on an alien, who shrieked and writhed – the axle grease stuck to the monster's skin, Dominione was glad to notice, and burnt it badly, before it's comrades put the flames out.

Where were the other Sahariana's?

Sergente Cappriccio started to jog away from the depot, casting a backwards look over his shoulder every few seconds. He deserved to make it, thought Dominione. Where were the other cars? Had they been stopped?

The last car, driven by Caporale Britoli alone, lay under a camouflage netting stripped from the British truck park. When the second black tank powered past, to move the static first tank by pushing it, Britoli fired the engine, revved it to a screech, jammed the accelerator with a stick and let the clutch in before jumping clear. The car shot forward, bounced off a pile of crates and into the low rear end of the enemy vehicle, creating an enormous smashing explosion of glass.

Britoli rolled to his feet, only looking back long enough to witness more monsters emerging from the black tank, which had been physically shoved into a mud hut. They moved in an almost comical manner, bobbing as they ran, the monsters, but they carried weapons.

A red flare soared into the rippling desert air, the signal from the Tenente for all vehicles to fall back. Britoli saw it, and then nothing else as a great, thundering wave of blackness rolled over him.

Dominione scanned the depot with his binoculars. The longer they delayed pulling-back the greater the chance of being caught by the remaining eight black tanks, which must be flanking the depot.

The only movement was Sergente Capriccio, who came stumbling away from his hiding place amongst the crates, one arm dangling limply, running in peculiar hopping fashion.

'Pick him up!' ordered the officer, sending the car darting forward. Between himself and the gunner, they hauled Capriccio into the rear compartment; the sergeant's right arm and leg were numb and useless.

'Head for the rendezvous,' called Dominione, feeling a macabre chill run down his back – nobody else had survived the encounter?

Under a sky shading into a purple dusk, Sorbusa rolled the body of the Warrior sentry into the sludgy, clotted waters at the beach edge. Great ripples intermingled with the incoming waves, sending the algae cultures bobbing about, reflecting patches of purple and gold. The body vanished into the sea, hidden by the algae blanket, weighted down by the equipment it carried.

Sorbusa now had a shard-thrower and stunner, weapons the sentry had carried. He offered one to Thedoctor, who refused. Well enough, thought the leader. Two weapons for me.

The Doctor paused to make some off-the-cuff calculations. The sentry Sorbusa killed had been keeping watch at the beach, from where it was only a few hundred metres up a shallow escarpment to the trans-mat platform. The gigantic pylons were clearly visible from here, on the weedy green sands. During the slow wade across the shallows they had seen the warning lights and sirens sound half a dozen times, at different intervals. Despatches to or from Earth.

'Once you get back to the Infiltration Complex, head for the Factory unit. One of the programmes there is to produce Transport Cars. If you get on one of those you can make it back to the supply depot,' instructed Sorbusa.

'You sound as if you aren't coming,' commented the Doctor slowly, and with emphasis.

'I am coming with you, Thedoctor, most certainly.'

'Then we need a way to get onto the platform and off at the other end without being killed. Any ideas?'

'Certainly,' replied Sorbusa. 'What sources of biomorphic energy are there at the Infiltration Complex? None. The Warriors sent there need bottled algae to survive. The greater the numbers of Warriors, the more algae.'

Impressed with this extrapolation, the Time Lord grinned broadly.

'Well done!'

'Can you not bare your teeth?' asked Sorbusa. 'It is a sign of aggression in our culture.'

'I apologise,' said the Doctor contritely. 'Remember that Lord Excellency Bloodsucker Sur will be after us, so time is an issue.'

Having crawled undetected up the beach to the sandy plain beyond, the escapees watched for traffic to the trans-mat platform. Their hypothesis was that a towing team of convict bio-vores would, sooner or later, drag a sledge of bottled algae nearby. The suns set on Delta Pavonis, creating a fantastic violet twilight of harsh beauty, enough to make the Doctor reflect on how the universe could embody paradoxes of both beauty and horror in the same scene –

'There,' pointed Sorbusa. A big sledge, dragged by six bio-vores, slowly made it's grating way over the well-worn road. The pair sneaked up behind it, hidden by night and the practiced swearing of the towing team's cadence. Sorbusa silently picked off several full bottles, drained them of their energy and tossed the empties away.

With a nod of informed readiness, the Doctor gingerly climbed aboard the rear of the sledge, realising that Sorbusa had removed roughly enough bottles to compensate for the new passenger's weight. Bowing low, the alien leader pretended to be pushing the sledge, another punished farmer acting out his penance.

Their masquerade lasted until the sledge reached the trans-mat platform. Few bio-vores were around, and those Technicians and Overseers busy around the platform ignored the Farmers, or at least until Sorbusa straightened up from behind the sledge. Without any warning he began to stun any bio-vore he deemed a threat, including the six towing the sledge. A lone Warrior on sentry duty was the first to get sent into oblivion.

Maintaining a much lower profile, the Doctor sneaked from the uncomfortable bottle-strewn interior of the cargo-sledge, over the side and over to the edge of the platform, to a point where he overlooked the trans-mat's ready-use control console. He steeled himself to ignore the whining sound of deadly glass darts, leaning above the instrument panels arrayed below. Simple, logical, easily comprehensible. He punched in a ten-second delay and pressed the enormous green "Go" button, before jumping back into the sledge, ignoring the collapsed technicians lying around the console.

'Ready!' he shouted to Sorbusa. The big alien threw a storm of darts at the duty team of Warriors coming up the approach ramp, then pushed the sledge to the edge of the trans-mat platform, then partly over the platform.

Precariously balanced on bottles, the Doctor wondered in a second of panic what his fellow escapee was doing.

'Quick! Get in!' he shouted. That was the plan – they both went back in the sledge, concealed from prying eyes at the other end of the materialisation.

'Get up to this end,' wheezed Sorbusa, straining at keeping the mass of the sledge balanced.

'Why –

- should I do – OH!' began and finished the Doctor. The end of the sledge, a good six feet in length, together with hundreds of bottles, had vanished. Without any restricting barrier to hold them back, the bottles he lay upon collectively slid out of the cargo section, carrying the Doctor with them. The fall was both painful and embarassing, cushioned only by the fact that he was now on Earth, off the trans-mat platform, and un-noticed in the hubbub taking place over his head.

Yes. Earth. That was the Moon overhead, and that was Ursa Major. They had made the transfer successfully, even if Sorbusa was missing.

Missing? No, not missing, not if that fracas was anything to go by.

'Thedoctor!' came a plaintive bellow. 'Flee!'

Sorbusa had decided, long before making the transition, that a sacrifice was necessary. A sacrifice, and a willing one. A prisoner and escapee just about fulfilled the description.

When the pair of them arrived at the platform on Earth, Thedoctor would be spotted, tracked and killed within seconds. Concealment in the sledge kept the human out of harm's way for a little while. A minor brainstorm on the leader's part meant he used the sledge's mass to deliver the other escapee over the side of the trans-mat; when the field was activated anything outside it would not get sent, so when the end of the sledge vanished Thedoctor would slide out. At the same time, the abruptly-separated end of the sledge would fall on the trans-mat console.

Elegant, he felt. Keeping the sledge horizontal with part of it projecting beyong the platform took a huge effort, which was less elegant. Nor could he tell Thedoctor what his plan was. Sharing a cell with the small alien meant Sorbusa knew what the small alien would approve of, and a glorious last stand would not be approved of.

What would be approved? That might was _not_ right. It was not, and never would be, and never had been, and he had to make up for the fact that he had practiced the creed utterly ruthlessly. He had Thedoctor to thank for that, a view into the world beyond the narrow boundaries his upbringing imposed, where fear and suffering had been commonplace.

If might was not right, then his race had no right to export their miserable ecological blight to other worlds, no right to plunder and murder endlessly, no right to degrade and despoil. This planet Earth ought not to be reduced to a million miles of desert slab.

So, when he materialised on the platform, Sorbusa deliberately attracted as much attention as possible, shrieking loudly, threatening nearby Warriors with the stunner and shard-thrower, warning Thedoctor to flee. He leaped from the platform, still shouting, and went for the nearest bio-vores, who simply stood, frozen with disbelief. Five of them died before the remainder scattered.

After a brief exchange of darts with encroaching Warriors, Sorbusa felt a dozen daggerlike impacts hit him as the Warriors regained their wits. Painful, and debilitating. He staggered sideways, falling against the massive base of the HQ Building.

No stunners. They must not send him into unconsciousness. Pretending to be battered into senselessness, he allowed the enemy to close in on him, suffering several shards shot into him just to test.

A last adrenaline surge allowed him to press the shard-thrower against the energy-cell of the stunner, pulling the trigger hard, and feeling a sudden wash of heat over him, his dying senses not registering the full blast of the ruptured weapon, which sent explosive echoes rolling around the complex, and scattered Warrior bodies like leaves in the wind.

Scrabbling away from the clinking pile of bottles, the Doctor realised Sorbusa had deliberately given up his life to allow the Time Lord to escape. The confusion, fighting and explosion managed just that, with the Doctor sneaking away to the south of Makin Al-Jinni.

For a pensive minute he looked back over the site. Scores of Warriors congregated around the skirmish site, where the heretic had died.

Probably come to feed off the life energy of their wounded comrades, the ghouls! How can they do that? Lack of positive role model, perhaps. Sorbusa managed to develop a conscience in a surprisingly short time, given the sterling example of me.

Another realisation hit the Doctor. The sledge on Wasteworld (the nickname he now gave to Delta Pavonis) had been stuck beyond the trans-mat platform. When he got sent through with the rest of the sledge, that overhanging remnant would fall to the ground – right on top of the control console. About a tonne of metal. Was it too much to hope that the control console on Wasteworld had been damaged? At any rate, there had been no further materialisations on the platform.

Assault Leader Icono could hardly believe his eyes as he surveyed the conquered depot at Mersa Martuba. The sprawling site they now ruled contained more minerals and metals than he had ever seen in one hundred and fifty years of life! Incredible profligacy in their use of metals. Why, there were whole vehicles constructed of metal, and a strange malleable substance made in circles that they travelled upon. Prismatic containers constructed of what surely could not be wood? That amount of frivilous use would have guaranteed several death sentences back home.

Minerals and metals in abundance, yet no great pickings of biomorphic energy. A faint trace off to the west, not big enough to hunt down. Very well then, they would order up scanning equipment from the Infiltration Complex, and use that to see who was where.


	9. Chapter 9

Seventeen: Both Ends Versus the Middle 

The neatly–dressed sergeant sitting at the radio desk with his headphones on looked up then shook his head at Major Hampson when the latter entered the room. The radio log contained only a few routine messages, nothing at all from the Depot at Martuba.

'Nothing doing, sir,' apologised the sergeant. 'I've tried every twenty minutes for the past three hours.'

'Still no joy, eh?' commented Hampson. 'It's not looking very rosy.'

Outside a train whistle tooted mournfully, becoming fainter as the locomotive pulled away from the railhead at Mersa Matruh.

Hampson felt worried, without showing it in front of the sergeant.

'Could it be atmospherics?' he asked. Reception in the desert could be the very devil. Once they had picked up the guttural exchanges of German units on manouevres in the Balkans, and occasionally picked up snatches from naval convoys in the Med.

'Doubt it, sir. I've been in touch with Benghazi and Tobruk, reception's a bit crackly but no problem otherwise.'

Damn it! What the hell was going on down there? mused Major Hampson.

First came a report from Middle East HQ, Brigadier Dorman-Smith no less, saying that his own private band of desert pirates, Jolyon Force, had fought a battle with infernal devices of Italian design. Fought it in the middle of the supply depot at Martuba, mind you. Lots of casualties, including dozens of Italian prisoners.

Then last night a damaged Wellington bomber passing over the deep desert detected an explosion beyond the depot – around where some bloody daft fools from England were poking around in some Roman ruins.

And now, no radio communication.

He sighed and made a telephone call to the RASC section at Thirteen Corps HQ. Could they send an aircraft to overfly the depot, see what the problem was? He got an affirmative – their Army Air Liaison section would send down a Lysander to nosey around the depot, and maybe cast a look over the archaeological dig, too. The Wellington crew were rumoured to have seen more than a simple single explosion but were not willing to talk about it for fear of censure.

Hopefully the lack of radio contact would be explained away by a faulty radio or flat batteries or broken valves.

Dawn in the wadi broke not long after the sounds of firing from Mersa Martuba died down. The sun jumped above the horizon, glaring down on the Bedford and it's miserable occupants.

Corporal Mickleborough cocked his head to one side, the better to listen.

'I can hear a vehicle engine.'

Shared alarm was the common response. They had no weapons between them, having been disarmed when taken prisoner.

'It must be Italian – those horrid black glass things don't make a noise,' said Sarah. 'And they'll be coming down the riverbed from the north – there's a way to get into it from there.'

Ten minutes later the British survivors encountered the sole Sahariana to survive battle with the aliens, and the four Italian soldiers manning the vehicle. Lieutenant Llewllyn, brandishing a grimy handkerchief tied to a stick, stood in front of the Bedford, Sarah at his side.

'I hope this works!' he muttered from the side of his mouth, trying to look indifferent to danger, or at the very least sternly resolute.

'It will!' declared Sarah. 'Because I will make it work!'

In lieu of the Doctor she put herself in his shoes. What would he do? Prevent the humans from fighting amongst each other, firstly.

Tenente Dominione jumped down from the passenger's seat and strode across the dry wadi floor, looking drawn and tired and incongruously young. He was covered by the driver, pointing a sub-machine gun at the Bedford.

'Miss Smith. Lieutenant Lewlin,' he said, sounding every bit as tired as he looked. 'You can consider yourselves my prisoners.'

Sarah translated for the lieutenant, before snapping back a reply.

'Don't be ridiculous, Tenente! "Prisoners"? We need each other's help to fight back against these alien monsters, not to turn on each other.'

The officer blinked in surprise, not expecting such a spirited counter-attack.

'Where are the rest of your men?' asked Roger, craning to peer around or over his opposite number.

'Dead. Or rendered unconscious,' replied the Italian, shortly, his stoney expression rendering translation un-necessary. His hand hovered over the holster on his belt without actually drawing the weapon held there. Sarah caught the sudden indecision and pounced verbally again.

'Then you ought to understand what I said – we need to band together. You have weapons, while we don't. We have food and water and petrol. We fought the killing machines those aliens sent out before, we know how to destroy them and what to avoid.'

Dominione threw up his hands in despair.

'Very well! Very well, we can have a truce.' He looked at Roger. 'Friends,' he managed in heavily-accented English. 'We need your word if we give you parole,' he said to Sarah. 'No attempts to escape, no attacks on my men.'

Roger agreed to these terms. His choice was limited, after all. The most deadly weapon his collection of refugees could muster was a pen-knife.

'Let's see what we're dealing with,' he muttered. All three of them walked to the edge of the wadi and Dominione scrambled upwards, narrowly avoiding falling on the friable stones. Roger caught the officer's elbow and kept him upright.

'Grazie,' he murmured, bracing both elbows on level ground and scanning the now-distant depot.

Four dark masses, with a background of supply crates and pallets, stood still on the baking gravel. Further back, beyond them, more black blobs were moving slowly. This early in the morning heat haze wasn't a confusing factor for vision.

'They are not moving forwards. I count four Carro Armato Negre, the black tanks, and more moving in the depot. Ah. Ah, yes, now I see. They were moving the damaged vehicle.'

Remaining still under the hammer of sunlight for long minutes, long dispirited minutes wondering what his men were suffering, the Tenente realised the alien vehicles were not advancing. He waved over his driver and stationed him at the wadi edge, with instructions to alert them if the black vehicles began to move again.

'Come on,' said Sarah, adopting a sure and certain manner that she didn't really feel. Leading the way, she introduced the Tenente to her fellow Britons in the Bedford.

'A truce is in place,' she announced. 'We don't try to get one over on the Italians, and they don't take us prisoner.'

'Good!' said Albert, with emphasis. 'Since all we have to fight with are fists.'

'What happened to those wretched Italians?' asked Templeman, fanning himself with a sweaty, dirty hand.

Sarah asked Dominione, who stumbled over the explanation.

'He doesn't know. What he _did_ see was the aliens killing their own wounded.'

"Sucked dry into dust" had been the literal words. The aliens injured by gunfire or Molotov cocktail were killed by their healthy companions, shrivelled into nothingness.

'Then his men are, in all probability, dead,' stated Templeman gloomily.

Tam and Davey looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

'Bloody useless Eyeties. Couldn't knock the skin off a rice-pudding!' complained the Scot, loudly. Tam nodded in exasperated non-surprise. They were both veterans of the long advance by Thirteen Corps against the Italian Tenth Army from December last year, and felt a certain lofty contempt for the enemy.

The Italian officer might not have spoken much English, but he detected the sneering tone immediately and bristled with annoyance.

'That's _quite_ enough of that!' snapped Sarah before Roger could intervene. 'We are supposed to be working together - '

'Alright, Miss Smith,' interrupted Roger. 'You two, keep your opinions to yourselves!'

Privately he quite agreed with the other rank's opinions; he'd seen the acres of dispirited Italian POW's from Operation Compass and felt that Italians were more a comic-opera opponent than a serious military foe. Given that the local Italians were armed to the teeth whereas his own men – all two of them – were unarmed, diplomacy was the discreet option.

'How come you happen to have no weapons?' asked Sarah sweetly, with the open expression of a maiden aunt. 'Oh – could it be because the Italians managed to defeat you?'

She might very well have poked a lit taper into a dental cavity to judge how both British soldiers responded.

'I don't care!' she snapped at them. 'We have to deal with the here and now. With horrible alien monsters, who kill as soon as look at you. The Italians are humans and you had better understand that. Humans!'

If an officer had shouted at them, if a sergeant had bullied them, if a politician had tried to cajole them, the men in the back of that Chevrolet would not have been remotely impressed. Confronted with a slight female journalist speaking from the heart, they were motivated by a combination of guilt and hope.

'I can hear an engine,' said Corporal Mickleborough, with genuine surprise, an emotion that cut across worries about current terrestrial comrades. 'And it's not a truck.'

'It's an aircraft,' said Albert with assurance.

Indeed it was. All eyes turned to the skies, and the outline of a high-winged aeroplane that droned across the desert, failing to make a deviation or diversion. The metal insect went from east to west, then back again, droning away like a dragonfly.

Roger recognised the behaviour of a spotter aircraft, a type of plane that visited the battlefield to detect the opposition and direct artillery fire upon them. Or, perhaps, a photo-reconnaisance plane, out to take pictures of the depot.

'A Lysander,' announced Albert. He glanced at the others. 'The RAF and Army use them for reconaissance. Very low stalling speed.'

'That's it! Thirteen Corps have decided to investigate us!' declared Roger, with a touch of glee. 'There'll be a column here any time soon.'

Dominione looked less impressed.

'We will not be able to communicate with them, nor they with their headquarters.'

Sarah passed this on to Roger, and anticipated his question first.

'Why not? Because our radio is being deliberately interfered with. I suspect the – the monsters are responsible. We tried to contact our headquarters at Tenth Army and were unable to do so.'

That was the unpleasant conclusion. Nobody outside their little circle knew what was really happening down here, and nobody would find out.

Excellency Lord Sur felt both apprehensive and angry.

His anger was understandable. The last two surviving prisoners, a heretic and that alien Thedoctor, managed to escape from their holding cell. From the very middle of his citadel! Questions were already being asked, he could tell. Oh, he hadn't told anyone official about the shocking oversight, no, not at all. There would be spies in his household staff willing to pass on the information to other Lords and Excellencies, which led to the apprehension.

What would the other aristocrats of the coast think about one of their number who allowed a heretic to escape? And an alien? It was many generations since an aristocrat had been placed under detention and trialled. Long enough for Sur to worry about being made an example, as a novel form of entertainment.

The escape wasn't the worst part, either. Two fugitives loose in the desert wouldn't be a problem for long, as thirst or hunger would kill them quickly. These two had made their way along the coastline to the trans-mat platform and been sent to Target World Seventeen. Not only that, they had contrived to drop two tons of metal sled on the control console and render the whole equipment useless. Useless! Until it could be repaired and tested.

Sur picked up a kinked and gnarled metal bar from the table at his side, and took out his anger on the ancient metal, twisting and scrolling the metal by brute force.

The trans-mat, useless again. At this end. Just when Homeworld needed to send Warrior detachments to the target and exploit it, the ability to do so had deserted them. Already he had quintupled the guard, and was now petitioning for more sleepers to be woken from hibernation as extra guards. The permission would be granted, he felt sure, since there were so many sources of energy on the target world to be exploited.

But how he had underestimated that alien, Thedoctor! Cunning and clever simultaneously, that one. Sur strongly suspected that there'd been an error in translation, that Thedoctor was simply named Doctor, or maybe even Doc. His level of intellect presupposed a bisyllabic name, perhaps even a monosyllabic one.

A most worrying foe. Just to try and fool his fellow aristocrats, Sur ordered the announcement to be made that both heretic Sorbusa and alien Thedoctor were dead, killed by valiant and watchful Warriors at the trans-mat.

Farmer Imgelissa nodded to his assistant, Nurbonissa. The younger bio-vore used his rake to prod forward another youngster.

'Is it true?' squeaked the newcomer. 'Aliens walk amongst us? That the time of the Warrior is coming to an end?'

Imgelissa paused for a moment, remembering the strange, huge bio-vore encountered in the shallows. A throwback, what the aristos called a "heretic". Then there was the small alien creature, obviously intelligent and self-aware, who foretold that the Warrior culture was doomed to die.

No alien life-forms had ever walked on the barren lands of Homeworld, not in ten thousand years of recorded history. Yet the first to do so spoke of what every Farmer dreamed about: freedom.

'Is it true? Most assuredly it is! Did I not see it with my own eyes! Did I not hear it with my own ears! Our time is coming, Farmer. Only remember that, our time is coming.'

"Bio-morphic Spawning" read Assault Leader Icono in a previously-ignored section of his manual. "Segregation of bio-vores liable to undergo bifurcation is advised in order to avoid cross-contamination of biomorphic inheritance."

This made novel reading to him. To him, and to all bio-vores from the past eight thousand years. For all that time, there had been no new bio-vores created because there simply did not exist the energy resources to sustain any population growth.

'Locate an area of this site that can be easily guarded,' he ordered. 'Then allocate to it all Warriors liable to produce energy-reliant offspring.'

The idea was to corral all the problems in one area and thus deal with them altogether.

In the meantime there was much to cope with. The alien prisoners had provided them with much-needed energy, though that would require topping-up soon. The wounded Warriors also provided energy, part of the harsh Darwinian survivalist approach of Icono and his bio-vore legions. The leader felt somewhat puzzled at the demise of several of his garrison, killed by mysterious missiles that were propelled kinetically. A liquid that operated on an extreme exothermic reaction principle was involved.

All part of an alien evironment. Like the metal vehicles. Not being able to operate them with their alien crews now dead, they had mostly been left where they ceased to function. A pity, since three Transport Cars were now damaged and inoperable. A Mobile Repair Unit was being constructed at the Infiltration Complex, using metals from an alien vehicle towed back there. Icono remembered the astonishment when the technical staff first saw the trophy. So much metal!

There must be a problem with the trans-mat at the other end, too, because no further supplies came through once that heretic appeared and was killed. Fortunately a big shipment of bottled algae came through as well.

Not a great problem; they had enough energy here to keep going. Not only that, the scanner unit would be operational shortly, enabling them to locate other sources of bio-mass.

Albert and the Professor conferred with each other for several minutes, discussing in hushed but urgent tones. Sarah kept an eye on them, wondering what mischief they were cooking up.

The Italians were grateful for what little food there was, cooking the stew and sardines and accepting the water. Their desert car now stood alongside the Chevrolet, with one of the crew keeping sentry at the lip of the wadi. Periodically he would be replaced. When Dominione came back from his stint, Roger sent Tam to keep watch.

'The black tanks do not move,' reported the Tenente to Sarah, who passed the message on.

'That's just it, I don't think they can move around much,' interrupted Albert. Everyone bar Templeman stared at him. He clarified the statement.'When the Professor and the Doctor and I were stuck at the Temple, we saw lots of black – I suppose you could call them bulldozers, really – lots of them excavating the site. They had to go back into the factory building every half-hour to be re-charged.'

'They run on batteries?' asked Roger, half-amused.

'No, no, the Doctor said they used - er – what was it? oh yes! "Geo-thermal energy". Comes from the ground and doesn't run out. That's how the buildings work, they run on this geo-thermal stuff, and the vehicles do too.'

'Oh, I see!' exclaimed Sarah. 'If they move about too much their energy runs out and they have to toddle off to get charged up again?'

Albert nodded. Roger stroked his chin reflectively. A sensible commander would rotate the vehicles on duty at the depot, sending a few back to get re-charged whilst others stood guard. It wouldn't do for his little band of heroes to assume the enemy were stuck in place, unable to pursue.

'Oh for a battery of artillery,' he mused. 'A few salvoes would turn those black beasts into a shower of glass.'

'We haven't got any artillery, and we're not likely to get any!' said Sarah, with a touch of acid to her tone. 'We need to deal with what we've got and can get, not pie-in-the-sky.'

She had to translate that last idiom for the Italians.

Lieutenant Murray looked back at his small column of transport: "Murraycol", short for Murray Column. A lorried infantry company in Ford CMP's, two Daimler armoured cars, and a section of Bren Carriers, all led by him in one of the new American runabouts, a GP, pronounced "Jeep".

'Off to the arse end of nowhere, eh sir?' asked his driver. Murray tried not to grin at the description.

'Orders, Corporal, orders.' Which were to travel to, and re-occupy, the FSD at Mersa Martuba, where the garrison had carelessly allowed the Eyeties to take over. 'Shouldn't be too much trouble. Show up and shout, howzat.'

Eighteen: The Snake on Square Ninety-Nine 

The Doctor knew that there were hotter places in the known Universe than the Sahara. Many, many hotter places. Why, within the Solar system alone there was Venus, where lead boiled in the daytime, and Mercury, where the sunside experienced –

'Not very persuasive, are we, Doctor?' he chided himself. He had travelled under cover of darkness to the far west of Makin Al-Jinni, before daylight broke in the sky and pinned him to the sands like an insect on a slide. Now, feeling the twin problems of heat and dehydration, he wondered about where else he had visited that might be hotter.

'Vulcania, of course. The Earth of Project Inferno, after project failure. Arrakis. The Arabian deserts.'

Which brought to mind mirages of the latter. There seemed to be an object out there on the gravel and sandstone that might be real. It swam in his vision like a fish in deep water, yet the position remained constant. After several hours the object resolved into a truck, one of a myriad used by humans in the mid-twentieth century. Olive-drab paint scheme, outlines broken by disruptive camouflage, it had to be part of the military effort here in the desert.

The truck remained just where it sat when he first noticed it, immobile and unwanted. A desert orphan.

Static, the Chevrolet provided him with welcome shade, under the tailboard. From that vantage point he looked out across the gravel and sand, seeing the distant depot, with an array of non-human vehicles outside on sentry duty.

Canny in desert survival, he cut the hose leading to the radiator and was rewarded by a sluice of tepid water tasting of rust and rubber. Still, it was liquid, and he gulped it down, gagging a little at the taste.

Now feeling more like an investigator than a coroner and happy about it, the Doctor noseyed around the truck, discovering an ammunition box containing various tins and packets of food. No water, unfortunately.

Peering across the sand from the covered rear of the truck, he noticed several other immobile vehicles, big open cars armed with machine guns. No occupants.

Not a good sign. These derelicts must belong to the Italians who captured the depot, and who were in turn overwhelmed by the bio-vores. The bio-vores who now stood guard over their conquest.

Sarah! Oh I hope that girl had sense enough to get well away!

One of those Italian desert cars would be a sensible and stylish way to travel across the desert, lower in profile than the truck and doubtless faster, too. What would divert the bio-vores once he tried to drive the car away?

Well, how about a truck mysteriously approaching the depot? That should do the job. He carefully pulled the steering column apart, exposing the wiring and started the engine whilst putting the handbrake on. The next part was to slowly release the ratchet on the handbrake until it only just held, then put the truck into first gear, lashing down the accelerator with a length of string.

Hefting his newly-acquired box of food, the Doctor jumped down from the truck and skulked, as he felt it , towards the nearest empty Italian car. The impetus given to the truck by his jumping from the rear must have jarred the handbrake loose, and the truck began to move slowly forward.

It was tricky, trying to keep the car between himself and the guardians of the depot, and rendered trickier by the bulky ammunition box. Their attention may have been on the truck slowly chugging at them instead of the still-stationary Saharianas, or the sound of gunfire that came crackling over the depot.

The interior of the armed Italian car showed a collection of well-stowed tools, weapons, ammunition, canteens and tins marked "AM". Once again, showing a worrying familiarity with illegal methods of vehicle ignition, the Doctor began to turn the engine over and drove off, keeping one eye on his rear view mirror.

I need to find Sarah! he worried. I hope that gunfire was nothing to do with her. How I hope!

Sarah felt a little of the burden the Doctor regularly carried, finding it difficult to reconcile the British and Italians together. A bit of wit, a bit of humour and some old-fashioned female last-resort flirting helped to keep tempers calm. The amused disgust of the British soldiers towards their new allies was muted when they recognised the machine-gun mounted on the Sahariana.

'Hey, Tam, that's a Bren gun!' pointed Davey. 'One of our British guns, Miss,' he explained to Sarah. She translated this, and the Italian gunner nodded with a rueful grin. He gave a long speech in Italian, which Sarah translated for the British audience sitting in the back of the Chevrolet.

'He says – Torrevechio, the machine-gunner – says that they are glad to get their hands on British machine guns like the Bren because their own are always jamming. Italian grenades are useless, their rifles are feeble and only a madman with a death-wish would operate one of their light tanks.'

One good thing was the gradual recovery of Sergente Cappriccio. The paralysing ray's effects slowly wore off, until the burly NCO could gingerly sit and talk without help.

'I felt as if hammers hit me, all down my side,' he explained to Sarah. 'It still stings.'

Lieutenant Llewellyn in the meantime was working on when British forces might put in an appearance. They needed to be warned about the threat in Mersa Martuba, what it constituted and in what strength. The Italian radio didn't pick up anything and wouldn't transmit, so that medium was out of the running.

'We need to try and warn the force en route,' he told Sarah.

'How can you be so sure they're coming?' asked Sarah, quite justifiably. 'All we've seen is a solitary aircraft.'

Roger sighed, an expression of despair at the civilian's lack of understanding.

'Logistics, Sarah, logistics. No army can move in the desert without huge amounts of supplies, which is just what Mersa Martuba was established for. The schedule for advancing on Tripoli might have slipped but that depot contains hundreds of tons of supplies we need.' Casting a quick glance at Dominione, aware that such explanations were slightly undiplomatic, he added:

'Besides, Thirteen Corps won't want the Italians pinching our supplies.'

Sarah shrugged in silent acknowledgement of the other's argument.

'How can we warn anyone about anything?' asked Templeman, taking a sudden interest in the topic when everyone had assumed he was asleep.

'We can't,' admitted the officer. 'Not unless we get north of the depot and intercept them. The problem is that I don't know which direction they might come from.'

El Agheila, Benghazi, Mechili, Tobruk, Bardia, Sollum – half a dozen places covering a full one hundred and eighty degrees.

'And we'd need the Sahariana,' added Roger, looking again at Dominione. 'I don't fancy running into any of those big glass monsters in an unarmed truck.'

Surprisingly enough, Dominione was easily persuaded to lend "his" vehicle, with the proviso that the gunner, Torrevechio, went with it. Roger agreed, and Corporal Mickleborough drove.

Roger had a solar compass, a relic of his days at the dig before the outbreak of war. His plan was to head out of the wadi, then travel north and gradually curve over to the north-east, either intercepting the hopefully approaching convoy or at least picking up it's tracks and following them. Whilst the corporal drove he would scan the radio wavelengths for any traffic. Privately he doubted that he'd pick up anything. The alien's radio-jamming was pretty effective.

Their trek northwards amounted to a long, tiring slog across gravel and sand, bogging down in soft sand several times and needing to resort to sand-channels. The sole canteen of water got passed around sparingly.

After nearly three hours they spotted evidence of the passage of a large number of vehicles – tracks in the sand, including what looked like caterpillar treads. They set off to follow, stopping to check ahead for likely routes the presumed British convoy had taken. Despite losing the trail occasionally on stoney ground, the Sahariana made good time, catching up with the vehicles they were following to the extent that Roger could see them in his binoculars.

With startling speed they caught up with the convoy, Roger realising that the other vehicles had slowed down.

'Find higher ground,' he ordered Tam. 'We'll see what's slowing them down.'

That meant a short detour south-west, leaving them half a mile from the now halted convoy. Roger counted an open staff car, three Bren Carriers, five trucks and two armoured cars – Daimlers, he noted, mounting a two-pounder gun. Thirteen Corps took threats to their depot seriously.

'Sir,' warned Tam, pointing southwards. A scattered arc of black dots were out on the desert sands, but at such a distance that it wasn't possible to know if they were advancing or not. The head of the convoy must have seen their opponents too, and stopped to decide what to do. The convoy started moving again, just as Roger decided to try catching up.

Without warning, a sudden enormous ripple of heat swam upwards from the sands, temporarily obscuring the convoy in a vast bubble of hot air. When visibility cleared again, none of the vehicles were moving.

'Slow down!' hissed Roger, not understanding what was happening and not liking it one bit.

For Murraycol, the end was swift and frightening. Lieutenant Murray, riding in his Jeep, began to lead the column forward until a sudden enormous jolt hit them, accompanied by an incredibly intense blast of heat.

Briefly the Lieutenant wondered if he'd been hit by a shell, until he realised his arms and legs were still attached and intact. An appaling stink struck his nostrils, a compound of acrid chemicals, burnt metal and burning rubber. The Jeep engine raced wildly, then stalled.

Murray stepped out of the Jeep, realising that the whole car had dropped into the – and then he hopped back into the Jeep, cradling the smoking heel of his boot, and the tender sole of his foot.

'We're sitting in a load of glass, sir!' exclaimed the amazed driver. Lieutenant Murray examined the still-hot crust on the bottom of his boot sole and looked out across the smooth, hot surface. Leaning over the side of the Jeep caused him to break out in a sweat caused by the heat radiating off the surface.

His car had sunk up to the middle of the axles into the glass. The tyres were smoking and stinking, and the paint bubbled and flaked from the bodywork. Looking behind, his heart sank at the sight of every other vehicle in the column mired in the vast saucer of glass.

Aghast, the three occupants of the Sahariana watched from the safety of a hollow in the sands. The whole column stood immobile, as the deadly black tanks grew larger and larger.

'Why don't they debus?' asked Tam. Torrevechio guessed the question's meaning and gestured a man touching a hot object.

'The sand got turned to – well, it must be glass, mustn't it? Molten glass is ferociously hot. Must be waiting for it to cool down, but they _have_ to get moving before those things get here.'

Hurry up! Hurry up! Roger shouted to himself. He groaned in despair as the visible occupants of the vehicles began to slump over, victims of the paralysing rays from the now nearby black tanks. Tam began to swear furiously under his breath.

The turret of one armoured car slowly turned to face an approaching black tank, and the gun fired. The two-pounder gun was similar to that used by the Doctor to destroy the unmanned Sentinel and it shattered the black tank apart in a cloud of black glass fragments, followed by streaks of flashing light as tracer bullets smashed into the remainders. Nothing moved in the acre of brittle shards left behind.

'Nice one!' exulted Tam. 'That's the stuff to give 'em.'

Showing discretion and sense, the remaining black tanks, three of them, began to reverse. Not before the second armoured car fired three shots, one hitting a victim squarely in the middle, splitting it in two like a lightbulb. Bodies, living and dead, tumbled from the shattered halves. Tracer rounds from the Daimler's BESA machine-gun began to fall amongst the scattered survivors, bowling over several.

'Excellente!' muttered Torrevechio. Roger felt a brief lifting of his spirits – maybe the column could hold off the aliens!

Unfortunately not. Once again a great ripple of hot air went up from the column, merely from the rear this time, and the watchers saw both armoured cars completely submerge in a pool of liquid glass that focussed only on them. The other vehicles of the convoy, with their limp occupants, remained where they were.

Tam broke into an unbroken stream of curses, whilst Torrevechio looked pale. The gunner looked into Roger's eyes and the young officer felt the other man's pity.

'Sorry,' said the Italian, in English, shaking his head.

'Hsst! Those bloody monsters are coming on again!' hissed Tam.

The two remaining bio-vore transports disgorged dozens of infantry, who moved forward in widely-dispersed lines. By the time they reached the lake of glass it had cooled sufficiently for them to cross it. The unconscious bodies of the helpless British soldiers were unceremoniously dragged away, to be stowed aboard the transports.

'Can't we do something, sir?' asked Tam. Roger shook his head, hating that they must stay away and isolated.

'We're in the middle of miles of sand, Corporal. The instant we open fire, they'll drop us into a pit of liquid glass.'

Tam chewed his nails and grimaced at the now departing aliens.

'Okay. Let's get down there and see if anyone escaped or survived,' ordered Roger. There was no confidence in his voice.

The lack of expectation was justified. No survivors remained. Roger spent a full ten seconds staring at the two Daimlers, trapped like flies in amber, the top of their turrets a good three feet below the surface of their solid tomb, hatches ajar, tyres crushed and melted to sad dark remnants.

God, what it must be like, crushed and roasted alive by molten glass!

'Sir, there's rifles and tommy guns and grenades in the trucks. Should we get a few?'

'Aqua,' said Torrevechio, holding up a dozen canteens by their straps.

'Yes. What food you can find, too.'

They didn't spend long salvaging from the vehicles; the heat radiated and reflected by and from the sand was intense, and they felt like looters. Roger made sure to unseat a Bren gun from one of the carriers, and a wooden crate full of loaded magazines for the weapon.

Shadows were lengthening and the sun sinking by the time the Sahariana reached the rendezvous in the wadi. Tam drove without lights, deeming the jarring and bumping they suffered due to lack of illumination more than compensated by the stealth provided.

Approaching at a crawl, all three were surprised to see another Sahariana parked alongside the Chevrolet.

'Welcome back!' greeted Sarah, waving and smiling brightly, an expression which dimmed the instant she saw how dejected the three men were.

'How did _that_ get here?' asked Roger, pointing at the newly-arrived desert car.

'Simple. I drove it,' said the Doctor, jumping down from the rear of the Bedford. 'What news of your relief column?'

The young officer's brows darkened.

'Wiped out. Either rendered unconscious and taken away or – or drowned in molten glass.'

Sarah shuddered.

'How horrid!'

The Doctor narrowed his eyes at Roger's news.

' "Molten glass"? Let me guess, the sands were suddenly rendered liquid? Hmm. Yes. An inducted geo-thermal pulse, I shouldn't wonder.'

Nobody within earshot understood what this meant, so the Time Lord clarified a little. Not too much, he didn't want these humans thinking he was equally a threat.

'Geo-thermal energy, used by the bio-vores to power buildings and vehicles. A limitless source of energy. One of the buildings at the Infiltration Complex is obviously able to manipulate geo-thermal energy at a distance, thereby turning the sand into glass. They created a barrier, maybe having tracked your fellows by their life-signs, both to trap their potential attackers and defend their new conquest.'

Roger and Torrevechio unloaded the arms, tinned food and canteens of water they had removed from the doomed convoy.

'Sustenance enough. We won't perish from lack of food or water,' observed the Doctor.

'The other Sahariana had some food and water in it,' explained Sarah. 'And the Doctor brought more from that truck Albert and the Professor came in.'

Roger looked for Dominione, who was over at the wadi rim, keeping an eye on the depot.

'Miss Sm – Sarah. I want to apologise to the Tenente. Can you take a message to him?'

'I speak fluent Italian: Northern and Southern dialects, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Milanese, heroic couplets and ribald verse to order,' grinned the Doctor. 'Your message is?'

Tenente Dominione twitched with visible annoyance at first when the Doctor passed on Roger's terms of apology. Sarah could see the body language from the other side of the wadi, the officer being outlined against the sands by dusk. His start of horror meant that the Doctor told him about the molten glass ambush.

Later, when relieved by Torrevechio, the Italian officer sought out Roger, beckoning Sarah over for translation.

'He says that he is sorry your men perished in such a fashion,' she conveyed. 'And that for the forseeable future he will fight alongside you as a brother in arms.'

'Brothers,' nodded Dominione, in bad English. He held out a hand.

'Frateri,' ventured Roger, shaking the offered hand.

Over in the truck, slightly raised voices could be heard.

'You effing well pay attention Private Menzies! If we get the chance to kill those horrid mucking monsters, we take it – I don't want to hear about how we were unlucky and the Eyeties were incompetent.'


	10. Chapter 10

Nineteen: Mouse and Lion 

Sarah felt depressed.

She had good cause. The Doctor and she were stuck in the deserts of North Africa, in the middle of the desert war of 1941, with the TARDIS gone astray in time. Gone astray in space, too, once the Hostile Automatic Displacement System mechanism suddenly whisked it away from them. Not even K9 to help them.

The warring terrestrial armies were not her greatest concern No; that was reserved for the impending invasion of aliens from a dying desert world, aliens who regarded humans as mobile fodder and planet Earth as a storehouse to be plundered to exhaustion.

An alien vanguard had already arrived. Hundreds of bio-vores – so-called because they lived by directly draining the life energy of whatever living matter they encountered – had arrived in the depths of the Saharan desert via a trans-mat, sent from their barren homeworld.

Sitting in the back of their Bedford, Private Menzies boiled water for tea. The dancing cooker flames made his underlit face look demented and evil, an appearance spoiled by his asking what Sarah wanted, a mug or a cup? Did she want sugar, like normal folk, or jam like that Eyetie sergeant?

'A mug,' she replied, the right answer in Menzies's eyes, as he pursed his lips in approval and nodded. The mug of incredibly sweetened tea, heavy with condensed milk, went down like nectar. Sarah sighed in satisfaction, able to concentrate on matters other than her thirst or stomach. Over in the second Sahariana Roger, Tam and the Doctor were all in discussion, a "discussion" sounding very much like an argument.

'We have only three machine-guns, assorted small arms, a few grenades, not enough food or water and an equal split between British, Italian and civilians,' expounded Roger, being studiedly polite and hence implicitly rude.

'Them British gave the monsters a right stuffing. Blew up two of their tanks, and killed every monster in 'em. Put that in yer pipe.'

A moments silence fell before any answer came from the Doctor. Sarah winced in advance, knowing how unflattering and empirical the reply would be. The Doctor might be humane, but this wasn't one of those times.

'With respect, that is massively irrelevant. Yes, yes, I know your countrymen were brave, Private. But they are dead, and our opponents are alive. No, no, hear me out. The "black tanks" you described are principally composed of silicon dioxide, of which there is an infinite supply in the deserts surrounding us.'

Tam commented with an inaudible reply.

' "So what"? So it means the bio-vores can create an endless supply of silica machines, especially since they now have human vehicles to recycle and use for the metallic components. You may have destroyed two or three or four, but they will be replaced by fifty or a hundred others. Similarly with bio-vores. They reproduce by ingesting energy. Having drained the life energies from over a hundred – maybe a hundred and thirty? – humans, they can replace all their losses within days.'

Sarah felt as if punched. Back to square one after all the effort and sacrifice they'd endured? How could that be!

The Doctor stood in the rear compartment of the desert car, seeking to assert himself by virtue of his sheer presence.

'Mere blind bashing, weight of metal, or military application, has all so far proven useless. We need to apply intellect to the problem.'

Stunned silence fell over the small audience. Taking this as acquiesence, the Doctor carried on.

'Unfortunately we are not going to be able to get anywhere near the trans-mat platform, not since it was sabotaged. The bio-vores are present in force around it.'

'You mean we might as well have not bothered fighting them things?' asked Private Menzies. 'Now there's even more than before?'

'Hopefully not yet,' said Roger. 'These alien horrors can't simply reproduce overnight, can they? And creating more black tanks will take a while.'

'Correct. There is a window of opportunity. Narrow, but it exists.' The Doctor sipped at a mug of tea. 'And I need to find out what this depot contains.'

Once again silence fell, this time more to do with incredulity than puzzlement.

'Why! What's so important about the contents – I can tell you nine-tenths of the contents off the cuff, Doctor!' said Roger in determined fashion. 'Small arms ammunition: mostly crated and boxed .303, with belts of Vickers in boxes, ammo for two pounders, artillery shells, POL – Petrol, oil and lubricants. Plus a collection of miscellaneous bits and pieces, and some kit captured from the Italians.'

The Doctor cocked his head to one side.

'That other tenth is what I'm interested in. I presume Captain Dobie kept an inventory of what the depot contains?'

'Yes, in his office. In the desk.'

'You could sneak in the back,' said Tam. 'We knocked a hole in the back wall.'

'Splendid!' chortled the Doctor, rubbing his hands in satisfaction, making Roger look at him with alarm.

'Hold hard, you're surely not planning on going back in there! It's swarming with those bi-vores.'

'_Bio_-vores. Yes it is, which is why I shall create a diversion.'

Sarah couldn't catch what they said next, as all three moved off the truck.

So! He's planning on swanning-about on his own, without anyone to watch his back. Typical! she grumbled silently. And not if I can help it! she added.

The Doctor looked across the gravel plain to the depot, where a black tank stood guard, and occasional bio-vores could be seen patrolling. They were safe in the wadi, perhaps even protected against the bio-vore's equivalent of radar.

'You can't cross that. They'd spot you and knock you flat with their ray guns before you got half-way there.'

'They are more correctly described as "neural-inhibitors" rather than ray guns, at least from the description Sergente Capriccio gave. I've no intention of crossing it before the diversion is in place. Now, Lieutenant, do you think you can find me rope or cable, a few empty bottles and a pint or two of petrol?'

Assault Leader Icono felt moderately satisfied with the progress of his detachment to date.

True, they had suffered forty losses. However, fifty Warriors were now budding a new offspring, so the losses would be made good in days.

Two Transport Cars had been badly damaged and another two destroyed by the alien's fully-covered gun vehicles. Once again an unbelievable use of metal! To have a completely enclosed war-fighting machine. His sub-leader, killed in the first Transport Car, underestimated the small aliens. Once again, with the Mobile Repair Unit the two damaged Transport Cars would be operational soon. Not only that, with all their recycled metal the Factory building could manufacture more Transport Cars, or remote sentinels.

The life-signs scanner didn't show any more viable victims. A hitch in the device's operation made it throw up a random blip a short distance from the conquered supply site. Apart from that it didn't show any more targets.

A pity! Those last humans, ninety of them, were most welcome fodder. Small yet satisfying. Once the trans-mat was sending again, he could send a tribute party to Excellency Lord Sur. In the meantime his detachment needed to put up with half a dozen Farmers, stuck on Target World Seventeen when the trans-mat failed.

He called up the HQ building at the Infiltration Complex.

'What are those wretched Farmers doing?' he barked at the technician who answered. 'They'd better not be standing around uselessly!'

'No, Assault Leader! They are removing the remaining sand from the Complex, dumping it beyond the rim of the site, sir.'

'Eviscerate one of them as an example to the others. If the trans-mat is not repaired by the time all the sand is removed, Eviscerate them all.'

'Immediately, Assault Leader!'

Ah but it was good to be the conqueror! A new world to plunder, limitless life-energy to absorb, and the local natives not powerful enough to halt the process.

At the Doctor's request, Roger had drawn from memory an outline plan of the depot, numbering the squares that represented piled crates of supplies. The Doctor's attention was on a pyramid of crates full of two-pounder anti-tank shells, the very one he had taken refuge upon. It made a good target because one crate had already been opened up by his own hands.

'Set that on fire and there'd be a pretty bonfire display, hmm?' he asked the collected soldiers. All except Doretti, the Italian radio-operator on sentry-duty, were gathered around the Doctor's Heath Robinson contraption.

'You're not kidding!' said Tam, with feeling. 'There must be ten tons of shells in that stack. If they got heated up they'd fly everywhere.'

'He's exaggerating,' said Roger, drily. 'It can't contain more than a ton. I don't see how you intend to set it alight, ten tons or one.'

Hefting the four-gallon tin full of petrol, the Doctor pointed to the container.

'With this, Lieutenant, with this!'

He tied the tin loosely to one end of a plank taken from the cargo floor of the Bedford. The plank pivoted on the machine-gun pintle of one Sahariana, the gun removed and the plank lashed in place with cable. At the other end of the plank a nail had been knocked through the wood and more cable tied to the nail. This cable led to the rear axle of the second Sahariana, both rear wheels jacked clear of the ground.

After making pages of pencilled calculations in his diary, the Doctor had fussed and shifted the vehicle orientation several times, to the exhaustion and bad temper of all involved.

'That tin won't smash when it lands, not like a bottle,' pointed out Davey. 'The stack won't catch fire.'

'That's why I need a Lee-Enfield and a tracer bullet from one of your Bren magazines, Lieutenant.'

Relishing his audience's curiosity, the Doctor loaded a single tracer round into the rifle Tam passed to him.

'Okay, Sergente Capriccio. When I tell you, and not before, you start the engine of your vehicle. Get the revs up as high as possible, into the red if you can, and only then put the clutch in.'

Shrugging, the Sergente took his seat.

'If this works as I want it to, we may get patrols of bio-vores coming to investigate. Once that crate catches fire, you all need to mount up and disperse.'

'Definitely!' agreed Dominione. 'How and where will you meet us?'

Slightly more difficult, that one.

'Say one mile due west of here. If the bio-vores keep following you, fall back another mile.'

Sarah, listening from the cab of the Bedford, pretending to sleep, wondered how the Doctor was going to manage travelling that far on his own, in the dark.

Except it wouldn't be solo, not if she could help it.

'Now!' snapped the Doctor. Capriccio revved the engine up to a metallic scream as the dubious soldiers stood watching.

Making a nasty _scrunch _in the process, Capriccio engaged first gear. The rear axle instantly accelerated from zero to twenty miles per hour, snatching the cable taut, catapulting the plank over the pintle and hurling the petrol tin in a high arc over the desert.

Splinters flew from the abused plank when the cable pulled it apart and Capriccio hastily turned the engine off.

Tam's comments were unprintable. Lieutenant Llewellyn stood open- mouthed at the tin soaring into the dusky sky. Dominione pinched his forearm, just to make sure.

'Not high enough,' said Davey, turning to glare at the Doctor, who merely winked and shouldered his rifle.

'You'll never hit it!' said Davey, bluntly.

Calmly taking aim, adjusting for windage, deflection and heat haze, the Doctor squeezed the trigger and hit the tin at the top of it's arc, the glowing tracer round knocking a plume of ignited petrol into the air. The additional energy of the bullet's impact tumbled the tin further out and downwards, landing on the crates of shells in a glare of burning petrol.

'I didn't just see that, did I?' asked Tam. 'I mean, that's just not possible, is it?'

This time Davey's comments were unprintable.

Roger stared at the fire, then back at the Doctor.

'Where – where the hell did you learn to shoot like that! People at Bisley would kill to be that accurate.'

The Doctor made an expansive gesture of false modesty.

'Oh, Sergeant Lucy. Royal Irish Rifles. The retreat from Mons.'

There wasn't time for Roger to argue that the retreat from Mons occurred a good twenty-seven years previously. Instead they dispersed the vehicles, knowing that to leave the wadi they must travel north to begin with.

Already, whilst they moved, shells in the burning stack of crates were beginning to "cook off" under the heat. Bangs and whines echoed across the desert. The two pounder rounds were solid armour-piercing ones, and wouldn't explode when they hit the ground, but they would make a nasty mess of anyone hit, as would shrapnel from their shell casings.

They dropped the Doctor off at the point where the wadi reached ground level. He kept low for several anxious minutes, Dominione's parting words "I hope a simple list is worth risking your life for" resonating. Yes, he hoped the list was worth it too.

After moving west he turned south and headed towards the depot, which loomed unmissably in the dark, illuminated flash-bulb style by explosions that wracked the western edge. There were no sentries, nor black tanks on watch duty. A particularly large explosion sent bits of shrapnel zipping and bouncing around him.

Darting from stack to stack, the Time Lord felt uneasily aware of another presence. Stalking him. Or was he imagining it? He paused to look around, not being able to check properly because time was tight. No, nothing there. A bio-vore wouldn't bother to sneak about.

There was Dobie's office! A great black hole with rubble around the wall underneath. Sarah and the other captives certainly made an effective escape route. Or, in this case, an ingress route.

_Zing_! went a hot piece of metal, inches from his head.

'Discretion is called for, I rather think!' he muttered.

Following not far behind, Sarah clutched her weapon and tried to catch up with the Time Lord, who had outpaced her across the desert without trying. Plus she had a stitch, and he didn't bother much about keeping an eye on the bio-vores, whereas she did.

Her heart flew into her throat in fright as a great black shadow detached itself from behind a pyramid of crates with Italian writing stencilled on them. Seven feet tall, with pillar-like legs and arms splaying out directly from the torso: a bio-vore. It seemed to have been sheltering in the lee of the crate, and caught sight of the Doctor without him seeing it.

The jam-jar full of petrol felt childish and silly compared to a dirty great monster like the one in front of her, but Sarah unscrewed the lid and threw most of the contents at the bio-vore, which turned at the sound of the lid grating free.

Before Sarah could light a match to ignite the petrol, her victim shrieked repeatedly in fear or pain or both, running blindly into the night and across the beaten route between the mud huts. A fragment of shell or another missile hit it in the side and it collapsed instantly, dead or incapacitated.

Diving into the hole, the Doctor banged his head painfully on the hefty wooden desk positioned only a couple of feet from the entrance. He froze before making an exclamation of pain and annoyance, hearing a noise outside and recognising the pitch of the footfall.

'Sarah!' he said, with quiet anger.

'Fancy meeting you here!' whispered the young journalist, sticking her head into the hut, then climbing in.

'I deliberately came here alone, and you still followed me!'

'You didn't say _not_ to come.' She added a few details about the bio-vore for good measure.

With an exasperated tut, the Doctor turned huffily and began to look in the desk drawers, sliding them out carefully in order to avoid making noise. Suddenly he turned to Sarah and his eyes twinkled with mischief.

'Thank you!' he whispered.

His caution seemed to be redundant. The bangs, whines and occasional much larger explosions outside drowned anything less than extremely noisy. Still looking, he saw nothing that resembled what Roger described – a thick wad of flimsies on a clipboard.

'Is this it?' asked Sarah, lifting a uniform jacket from a wall peg and discovering the clipboard.

'Excellent!' and the Doctor recovered his good spirits straight away. 'Now, let's conduct a little effective theft and sabotage, shall we?'

"Theft" involved a Bedford truck. "Sabotage" was opening the stopcock on a petrol bowser and throwing a lit match into the puddle resulting.

With a violent final bang, the explosions ceased. Devoid of the covering noise, the Doctor didn't bother with subtlety, driving out of the depot westwards at breakneck speed. He guessed any bio-vores in the depot would have made themselves scarce during the explosions and that this side of Mersa Martuba would be free from sentries. Just to be on the safe side, he told Sarah to hide on the floor of the cab, and hunched down himself to present as small a target as possible. He trusted to luck and the flat desert floor and simply drove for over a minute without looking outside.

When Sarah sat up to look in the rear-view mirror, the most obvious aspect of the supply depot was a pillar of flame blazing thirty feet into the air, from the petrol bowser. Later, while they were en route to the rendezvous, a colossal fireball soared into the night, the rolling boom coming to them after many seconds delay.

'Must have set off another fire,' said the Doctor, sombrely.

Twenty: Cutting Losses 

When the sun rose over Mersa Martuba, it did so over a haze that reeked of petrol and cordite, and a supply depot disordered and in places shattered by explosions.

Assault Leader Icono felt considerably disattisfied with the night's events, all his complacency of yesterday vanished. He cast suspicious glances at staff working on the consoles dismounted from his own Transport Car. Nobody met his gaze, or seemed likely to challenge him, at least not yet.

Over a dozen of his Warrior detachment were dead, and another half dozen injured, which meant Evisceration of course. Another Transport Car destroyed by the first series of explosions.

Fortunately the Repair Unit hadn't suffered any damage, so the damaged Transport Cars could be made mobile again shortly. The Life Signs scanner wasn't showing much of interest. There had been a few fleeting traces last night, erratic and distant.

What next? he wondered. They had drained the life-energy from the last prisoners earlier that morning. No other sources of energy were located nearby. In fact the budding Warriors had been put at risk by the explosions last night.

Time to move back to the Infiltration Complex, then. They would leave only a few sentries on guard.

'Pass the order along to store equipment and supplies and get ready to leave this position. I have decided that the alien's storage is too primitive and dangerous to risk staying any longer,' he instructed the communicator technician.

Five minutes later, the Life Signs Scanner began to ping, registering a big location of biomorphic energy, moving slowly from west to east about ten minutes travel from the depot.

'Excellent!' enthused Icono. 'Finish packing and plot an intercept.' His proboscis twitched in anticipation. More fodder!

Dawn allowed the humans camped out to the west of the depot to see each other easily, and to read the endless flimsies on Captain Dobie's clipboard. A sombre breakfast was eaten in silence, whilst the Doctor perused the notes.

'Was it worth it, then?' asked Dominione. The Doctor carried on reading before Sarah coughed and drew his attention to the question.

'Oh – sorry. Was it worth it? Yes, I think so.' He riffled back across various notes. 'Here – see this.'

"CAPTURED ITALIAN STOCK

FROM: TWENTIETH CORPS HQ

INITIAL LOCATION: APPROX. 20 MILES SSE OF POINT 206

NOW HELD: FSD MERSA MARTUBA

DESCRIPTION: WOODEN CRATED SUPPLIES

NOMENCLATURE: PROPRIETA XX CORPO

CAPO MEDICO OFFIZIERE

APPARATI UNITA MOBILE PER RAGGI X

ATTENZIONE! ESILE APPARATI!

At the bottom of the carefully inked-in notations was a scribbled note in pencil:

"It. medical kit no obvious use"

'What's all the mystery about?' asked Roger. The Italian officer looked puzzled at what the Doctor deemed interesting. Sarah translated for him, the Time Lord once again being engrossed in his collection of notes.

'It's a mobile x-ray unit, which should have been with the headquarters of Twentieth Corps and the medical staff there.'

Dominione added that the crate must have been abandoned during the retreat of January, then discovered and salvaged by the British.

'Oh, I know where it's located,' said Roger off-handedly. He indicated a stack on the sketch of Mersa Martuba.

'Here's another useful item,' said the Doctor, showing another note, duplicating most of the previous one. The difference was that this one had "L3/35 LANCE FIAMME" in the Nomenclature box. Another pencil note at the bottom said "Tin-can spare parts?"

'Aha, that's one of them Eyetie – er, Italian – tankettes, an L3,' said Tam, proud that he could recall the details.

'What does it need a lance for?' asked Albert, spreading jam on a slice of stale cracker.

'It means "flame thrower",' translated Sarah.

The Doctor looked at everyone, who looked back at him.

'Useful and important because the bio-vores have no knowledge or experience of liquid fuel or it's use as a weapon. Nor do they know anything about x-ray equipment, because their world lacks the trans-uranic elements that produce radiation.'

Most of the audience looked blank, though Sarah nodded and tried to seem knowledgeable.

'A person with sufficient background knowledge and experience could use the radiation source in that x-ray machine to construct an atomic bomb, for example,' said the Doctor in a blasé tone.

'What!' exclaimed most of the listeners at once.

'You sound like something from H G Wells,' snorted Roger. Then, struck by a sudden inspiration, his face broke into an expression of surprise and excitement. 'I say! You don't think these aliens might get laid low like the Martians - '

'No!' The Doctor's tone was forceful. 'Insufficient genetic similarity. There won't be any such _deus ex machina_ here, Lieutenant. This is your world and you will have to fight for it.'

Tenente Dominione and the Italians had most of the conversation explained to them by Sarah, who stumbled a little when translating "atomic bomb".

'The enemy's headquarters site will be very well guarded. How can anyone get there with a bomb of any description?' asked Dominione.

'By air or a Trojan Horse,' replied the Doctor. Probably the latter method; the nearest airfield was over a hundred miles away to the west in Italian-occupied Libya. The bio-vores might well drag those abandoned Sahariana's back to their complex for recycling. They'd never notice a little additional present aboard …

The concept of killing several hundred intelligent beings took some internal wrestling for the Doctor to justify to himself. Sarah also felt uneasy.

'So you're going to blow them up with an atom bomb? Not like you, Doctor.'

He sighed.

'I know, Sarah, I know. Negotiation, however, has not worked. We're fighting an evil system as much as it's manifestation here. Now, if I destroy that trans-mat platform, it means Earth is safe from invasion and occupation at the cost of several hundred bio-vores. The longer it takes me to construct a weapon, the more bio-vores will come through that gateway and the greater the consequent death toll. A weapon of last resort.'

Sarah could see that the decision wasn't an easy one. She looked over the other members of the party, none of whom believed the Doctor could create such a device. Even if they did believe they would inevitably insist it be used, the instant it was ready.

'Couldn't you bluff them? Say you have a bomb when you haven't? or just threaten to use it unless they leave?'

With a sad shake of the head, the Doctor disagreed.

'You haven't encountered these creatures face-to-face, Sarah. Brutal application of force is how their civilisation runs. Mere threats are not sufficient to cow them.'

The big question, ultimately, was how to gain access to the various equipments stored at Mersa Martuba. A raid into the base whilst a diversion was mounted might work – or it might not, since that was how the Doctor had gotten in there the previous night. Once-bitten, twice shy.

Torrevechio, on sentry duty, noted an absence that he mentioned to Tam, when the British NCO came to take over.

'Nil Carro Armato Negre. Black Tank, none,' he pantomimed.

Tam, silently cursing the inability of other nationalities to speak English, scanned the depot and began to wonder about what he couldn't see.

'None of them black buggers, anyroad. No sign anywheres.' For at least half an hour he scanned the site, the beaten paths within and the barely-trodden border without. Unlike previous day's sentry duty, he didn't see anything moving at all.

'Nothing moving at all. I have to tell about this!'

Forty minutes later, Tam ground his teeth together and condemned himself for ever considering the mention of their enemy abandoning the depot. He condemned himself, and the bio-vores, the bio-vores most of all.

He was the driver, in one of the Saharianas, ferrying the Doctor, Lieutenant Llewllyn and Capriccio north of Mersa Martuba. Far, far north of the depot. The idea was to move back in from the north and determine if any of what Davey called the "nose-goblins" were still lurking around.

Instead the car came across a series of tracks, long ploughed slots in the sands running from west to east, made by a caravan of animals. The Sahariana ran parallel to the tracks for almost a mile, before they suddenly turned south and then abruptly ended in a confusion of debris. At first no-one realised what they were looking at, until the Doctor dismounted and picked up a semi-cylindrical mass of dehydrated paper, as it seemed, which crumbled in his hands.

'A saddle,' he stated, in a flat and emotionless voice. 'For a camel.' He toed a mass of withered fibres at his feet. 'And this was the camel.'

Tam looked over stringy, dessicated remnants spread over the desert for yards and yards. Hideously similar to the remnants left after the killer tanks attacked Mersa Martuba the first time.

Sergente Capriccio joined the Doctor, picking up a long metal tube that dangled a trigger mechanism. A rifle, with all the wooden fittings destroyed. Next were a pair of toy-like slippers, rotted and decayed by centuries of wear.

A shiver utterly out of place in the baking mid-day heat ran down Tam's back. He watched the burly Italian sergeant pick up a child's toy, stare at it for a second and then drop the item, wiping his hands against his tunic. Lieutenant Llewellyn's foot stirred tiny clinking beads strung together, which he recognised as ear-rings, hastily moving off the sands.

'I would guess that the bio-vores carried out an interception here,' stated the Doctor.

'Women and kids, mind,' added Tam. Then he added a great deal of cursing.

Femme et bambini,' agreed Capriccio, gnashing his teeth. A stream of voluble and emphatic Italian followed.

The Doctor felt any doubts concerning the imminent destruction of the bio-vores receding. To attack and kill soldiers was one thing, to attack unarmed civilian non-combatants and slaughter them en masse, that was another thing entirely.

'So you think the wogs ran into the nose-goblins?' asked Tam of the Doctor. 'And got killed for their pains?'

Roger saw an emotional shutter fall over the Doctor's face.

'That's quite enough of terms like "wog", Corporal. They were human beings. Human beings, and they suffered a dreadful death for no good reason.'

'Yeah – well – everyone call's 'em – well, anyway,' replied Tam weakly. That Doctor Smith didn't raise his voice yet it still felt like being slapped about the face with a cactus. A blush brighter and hotter than the mid-day sun came to the stolid soldiers' face.

'What were they going south for?' he asked, trying to change the subject. 'That'd take them near the depot.'

'Tam's right,' added Roger. 'The Arabs have enough sense to keep well away from any soldiers.'

The Doctor stared at the sand and gravel beyond the massacre scene and wondered, too. Out there, a hundred yards away, an object had stood in the sand, he could just discern the outline -

'No sign of any beasties from the north, either,' said Roger, scanning the depot with his binoculars. 'I can't believe they left the whole site unguarded.'

'There are probably sentries posted further inside,' warned the Doctor.

'Good!' said Tam, patting a liberated tommy-gun.

'Be _careful_,' said the Doctor with emphasis. 'They carry hand-held stun guns and a dart-throwing gun every bit as deadly at short range as your firearms.'

After what Sarah explained about the bio-vore's reaction when she threw petrol over it, the Doctor had armed himself with a jam-jar full of petrol, turning down the offer of a rifle or pistol or a Bren gun.

Roger decided that the so-called aliens really were monsters. Only a bunch of monsters could kill a score of civvies like that, even if they were only Arabs. He didn't trust the nomadic tribes, who stole anything not watched or nailed down and who supported whichever side was nearest. Still and all, as Doctor Smith pointed out, they had been humans.

Leaving the Sahariana behind, they approached the depot on foot, unhappily aware that the sands might turn to molten glass at any second. The Doctor considered it unlikely, given that they were such a small group. He made a small detour to investigate an unpleasant suspicion, before being hissed back into the line by Roger.

Creeping slowly closer, they smelt the stink of petrol and diesel fumes. A haze obscured the marching stacks of piled supplies, the results of last night's fires.

Sergente Capriccio encountered a sentry first. The Italian, with long experience of Spain and Libya behind him, remained crouched behind a crate when Tam moved forward and into the open lane between stacks.

A great towering alien broke from cover ahead of the Sergente, who nearly exclaimed in surprise. The ungainly monster levelled a weapon at the back of Tam Mickleborough. Sergente Capriccio levelled his own weapon, a Beretta sub-machine gun, and fired first, three bursts.

Tam whirled around, dropping to one knee, and emtpied a whole magazine into the bio-vore. The massive creature reeled under the impact of dozens of bullets, dropping it's gun, finally crashing to the ground.

Silently witnessing the death of the bio-vore, the Doctor looked around but failed to see Lieutenant Llewellyn. Tam and Sergente Capriccio were reloading and taking cover.

'Any others will come to investigate!' warned the Doctor._Zing_! went a missile by his head, close enough to make his curls shake. The object thudded into a crate nearby, leaving no doubt that it possessed enough velocity to kill.

Pretending to be hit, the Doctor dropped limply to the ground, suffering uncomfortable bruising from the stones lying there. His plan was to allow the bio-vore to get close enough –

'It's killed Doctor Smith!' shouted Tam. A scrunching footstep warned the possum-playing Doctor that his assailant was nearly upon him. Peering beneath half-closed eyelids, he saw the torso of a bio-vore loom close. Sitting up, he threw the contents of his jam-jar at the alien.

Petrol splashed everywhere, including back onto the Doctor. Most of the liquid assault ended up on the bio-vore, which froze in horrified astonishment for a moment before shrieking loudly, running in a circle and collapsing like a toppled tree.

'Lord alive, I thought you'd copped it!' exclaimed a surprised and pleased Tam.

'Attenzione!' warned Capriccio, pointing down the lane between the supply stacks. 'Doctor Smith, get under cover immediately!'

Having used up his petrol, the Doctor had little choice. He feinted to the left, then dived to the right, a dart plucking at his sleeve as he did so. Hiding behind a collection of oil drums, he ducked as the sound of gunfire bounced around the pyramids of supplies. Tam and the Sergente seemed to be having trouble keeping their enemy at bay, until a deeper weapon began firing, going through dozens of rounds. It seemed to be coming from further to the east, behind the attacking bio-vores. A Bren gun, the type of light machine gun that Lieutenant Llewellyn carried.

'Ahoy! Enemy dealt with!' came the young officer's voice.

All three men emerged from cover, to see Roger standing atop a pyramid of crates, switching magazines on the machine gun he cradled. He waved and pointed to the bodies of three bio-vores below his perch, riddled by gunfire.

'Thought I could gain a better perspective and look down on them,' he said. 'I kept a sharp eye out, up on that pile, and there don't seem to be any more of them.'

'That one, the one that took a petrol bath, it's still alive,' said Tam, pointing with the muzzle of his tommy-gun.

'Not for long,' muttered Capriccio under his breath, cocking his gun.

'Allow me to interrogate,' requested the Doctor, standing in front of the bio-vore to prevent any "accidents" with gunfire. He kicked the unfortunate creature on it's webbed foot, eliciting a jerk in response.

'Don't! Don't touch me!' the alien babbled. It's skin where petrol had fallen was turning white and blotchy, blistering whilst they watched.

'Are there any survivors of the caravan you attacked?'

The bio-vore made several gestures, none of which the humans recognised. Eventually it realised they didn't realise.

'No, none. We Eviscerated them all on the spot. Time was a factor. We needed to be quick.'

Loathsome creature! thought the Doctor, not feeling at all sympathetic.

'Why? Why the need for urgency?'

'Because of the Artefact! It appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of the sands whilst we approached the fodder.'

All three soldiers bristled with annoyance, visibly. Even Capriccio got the gist of what their captive said.

'Assault Detachment Leader Icono decided to take the object back to the Infiltration Complex, for further study.'

Roger looked closely at Doctor Smith, who appeared to be peculiarly concerned with the mysterious "artefact". So the monsters took another piece of kit from the caravan. So what! The Doctor pursed his lips, looking down at his scuffed, dusty boots. Tam considered whether to ask what the Arty Fact might be, then decided not to, not wanting to look silly.

'Look out!' shouted Sergente Capriccio, knocking the Doctor aside bodily, having seen the alien pull out a blade and prepare to throw it whilst attention was elsewhere.

The Doctor landed badly, the wind knocked out of him. Capriccio lay over him, as protection from the bio-vore – no, that wasn't right, the Sergente wasn't moving. What felt wet?

Tam cocked his tommy-gun too late and too slow, as the bio-vore surged to it's feet, knocking the corporal flat with one blow of it's brawny arm. The alien took a single step towards the helpless Doctor before Roger put the Bren gun to his shoulder and began to fire, bursts of three rounds, the bullets making a hideous smacking sound when they hit home. The impact knocked the alien backwards, throwing it against the rough wooden crates of a supply stack, then carried on knocking it backwards until it fell bloodily to the desert sands, shot apart.

The Doctor managed to roll out from underneath the Sergente. A long glass dagger protruded from the Italian's sternum, around which blood leaked slowly.

'Killed instantly, I'm afraid,' said the Doctor, standing up to look at the other two of his party. 'Pierced his heart, poor fellow.'

Another reason to hate these alien parasites!


	11. Chapter 11

Twenty One: Boxing Clever 

Unlikely as it might seem, Farmer Imgelissa had again been paired with Nurbonissa to haul bottled algae. That made at least a dozen times the duo had been allocated to each other, something that would not normally have been tolerated, let alone repeated. Allowing a rapport to develop between the Farmers was frowned upon by the Overseers. Somebody wasn't paying attention to schedules.

Imgelissa waited until the sled was well on its way before broaching the subject of Warrior awakenings. He didn't want anyone overhearing things, not if it could be avoided.

'So, you've heard about Sur petioning for more Warriors to be woken? What do you think of that?'

Nurbonissa wasn't stupid or slow.

'One of two things. Either so many Warriors have been lost in this adventure that replacements are needed urgently, or the target world has such an abundance of resources that more help is needed to cope with it.'

Imgelissa snorted in disbelief. More help indeed!

'Can you see Warriors undertaking menial work like collecting minerals or live flora? If bio-morphic resources were there, we'd be there too, harvesting.'

"Pillaging" would be nearer the truth, if I were being completely honest. "Harvesting" is too tame a word. Target World Seventeen will be drained dry once we arrive in force, turned into a bad copy of Homeworld.

They dragged the sledge in silence, both thinking.

'Sur is in trouble himself, anyway. I hear that the other aristos along the coast are thinking of a prosecution,' said the younger bio-vore.

'Because that alien escaped?'

'The heretic, too. Do you know, they escaped using a bone prosthesis. Made out of metal.'

'Well, that's those from five thousand years ago for you. More metal around for working with.'

'And, just think, those detention cells were sat underneath Sur's castle. Not off in the Wastes.'

Imgelissa stopped, suddenly taken aback. Nurbonissa carried on towing for a second, until drag stoped him, too.

'What? What is it?' he asked, looking around in alarm.

Imgelissa took up the traces again.

'Just think about what we just said. How come we know so much about high politics and the inner workings of an aristocrats castle?'

The younger bio-vore wondered silently, then gave up.

'Leaks. Rumours. Information passed along. The Overseers aren't able to stop rumours starting any longer. Farmers actually _saw_ and talked to the alien escapee – me being one of them.'

A steep incline loomed and conversation stopped whilst they hauled the heavy sled.

'What did this mysterious alien say?'

'He warned that the time of the Warriors is nearly over, that the aristocrats are going to fall, and a time of freedom from fear is at hand.'

The far side of the incline ran downhill in a long curve, along a stretch of the sea that came inland, running over a bridge of granite blocks. Clusters of Farmers could be seen wading in the shallows, bringing in scoops and nets of algae for processing. One or two waved at the sled as it passed, unusually daring in that it meant ignoring the incessant demands of the job for a few seconds.

'I feel we are on the brink of great things!'

A sombre party of three men buried the body of Sergente Capriccio behind the mud huts, alongside the larger graves dug for the soldiers killed days before. Roger took an identity tag from beneath the NCO's blouse, intending to pass it on to Tenete Dominione.

'Come on,' he said, despondently. 'You can't bring him back, Doctor.'

It took a sharp tug on Doctor Smith's arm to move him from the grave. Roger wanted them loaded up and out of the depot before any more monsters arrived, and they'd need all hands to shift crates and boxes. He left them, to return at the wheel of their Sahariana.

The young officer's knowledge of the depot proved vital, since he knew exactly where to locate the wooden crates storing Italian salvage, and where a one ton crane was stored. Both crates they wanted were, inevitably, underneath a collection of others, and the whole thing draped in camouflage netting. Roger used the Sahariana's bonnet-mounted winch to drag the netting off, then handed out a pair of long levers.

'You can't lift this stuff with your bare hands,' he warned, producing a pair of stout, battered leather gloves. He passed a pair of crowbars to Tam and Doctor Smith, indicating how far they needed to shift the outer boxes in the stack.

Tam found that Doctor Smith was far stronger than he looked, able to help shift wooden crates surprisingly easily, which gave the tough Geordie cause to pause and wonder.

'What made ye chuck petrol over that nose-goblin?' he asked, wanting a diversion from the slow, hard work.

'Petrol evapourates rapidly and especially so in a high ambient temperature, and the latent heat of vapourisation, when applied to the epidermis of a non-excretory individual – ah. Sorry. In English? The "nose-goblins" don't sweat, Tam. They have a very efficient system of keeping their body temperature in balance, probably based on a super-dense capillary network. Liquids like petrol, or after-shave, or even whisky, would dramatically destabilise that balance when they evapourate from the skin. The "nose-goblin" goes into shock.'

Tam nodded wisely, grateful for the slightly simpler explanation.

'You're a bit of a Renaissance man, Doctor Smith,' announced Lieutenant Llewellyn, busily hauling chains on the one-ton crane and panting in rhythm whilst doing so. 'Biology, atomic physics, neurology, improvised weapons.'

'Wellll – I dabble!' beamed the Doctor, hoping not to become a focus of attention. 'You know how it is – widely read, widely travelled. Been around a bit, seen a few things.'

Roger, using the crane, swung a crate ("track spares for M11/39" according to his notations on the flimsies) over and across, dumping them abruptly on the gravelly ground. His lack of care was rewarded with a shattered clinking sound and the release of a puddle from the crate. A cloyingly sweet smell filled the air.

'What the hell is in there!' he asked nobody in particular, sounding astonished.

Tam sniffed.

'Booze, sir.'

'Amaretto,' corrected the Doctor, sniffing also. 'Italian almond liquer,' he informed the two British soldiers.

When they prised the crate open with crowbars, they discovered twelve layers of liquer bottles, each layer consisting of twelve bottles. The bottom two layers had been broken by Roger's rough treatment, but one hundred and twenty intact bottles remained.

Tam whistled.

'This is not a licence to get paralytic, Corporal Mickleborough!' snapped Roger sternly.

'Did I mention whisky as effective against bio-vores?' mused the Doctor aloud. 'For "whisky" read "Amaratto".' He cast a cynical eye over the crate of bottles. Pretty obviously, someone had been up to mischief here, hiding alcohol in what ought to be a wooden box full of tank tracks.

Within an hour both crates they sought had been removed from the stack, then hoisted onto the Sahariana, which made heavy going back to their old rendezvous in the wadi. Tenente Dominione's face fell the instant he realised Sergente Capriccio wasn't amongst the returnees. Roger handed over the metal tag and the Doctor translated.

'Dead?' queried Sarah minutes later. She wasn't sure how she felt, remembering the Segente's garlic-laden breath and wickedly-sharp knife when he'd taken her prisoner. Not a gentle or civil man.

'Killed whilst saving my life, and Tam's,' added the Doctor. Sarah immediately felt like an ingrate and blushed to her boots.

Within an hour of the three returning to their wadi hideout, argument broke out about where to stay. Eventually the party voted, eight versus two, to return to Mersa Martuba. The bio-vore sentries were dead, there were immense amounts of supplies at the depot and food in the wadi had nearly been exhausted. Plus the Doctor needed a suitable environment in which to build his atomic bomb.

'You and I have more basic worries, Sarah,' he cautioned the young journalist whilst travelling in the back of the incredibly noisy Chevrolet. 'I fear the TARDIS materialised in the desert, right in front of a column of attacking bio-vores.'

Sarah goggled in anxious disbelief.

'What! How do you know!'

The Doctor explained. He had spotted a tell-tale square imprint in the desert sands that might have been the result of the TARDIS landing once the Hostile Automatic Displacement system stopped operating. A square imprint, appearing from nowhere. In coroborration, the Arab caravan travelling from west to east had diverted to investigate the ground-trace. So too had the bio-vores, only since they won the skirmish they had retained the trophy.

'Where is the TARDIS now?'

'Probably back at the dig. Taken there for further study.'

Sarah chewed her lip. No TARDIS? That meant she and the Doctor were stranded here in early 1941, stuck in the contemporary without any means of achieving the hypertemporary. Well, _she_ was stuck. The Doctor could endure ten times the wait she could without any ill-effects, given his lifespan. In fact some of his Time Lord mates could well drop by in a decade or two to see what had happened to him.

'So you see we do have a slight dilemma. Cobble together a crude nuclear weapon and destroy the alien trans-mat complex, at the cost of losing the TARDIS. Or, find our transport and leave, only for the invaders to over-run this world and destroy our future.'

Sarah recalled an earlier incarnation of the Doctor, and what he'd said – boasted, really – about the TARDIS.

'Surely a nuclear bomb can't destroy the TARDIS?'

'No,' replied the Doctor patiently. 'But don't forget the HAD System is still functioning. Under a nuclear attack I hate to think how far away in temporal terms the old girl would vanish to. Even if she stayed put, I don't really relish the prospect of trying to release her from being trapped in a cubic mile of radioactive glass.'

When they got back to the smokey, hazy depot, the sun had nearly set.

'Avoid grouping if possible,' cautioned the Doctor. 'The bio-vores have technology that can detect living organisms. I _think_ we're safe from an attack here, since there aren't many of us.'

'Bloody marvellous,' complained Davey. 'Come on, Tam, I know where there's a crate of Vickers'. I'm not going to have them nose-goblins creep up on us.'

Sarah took the opportunity to acquire a change of clothing – a pair of olive drab trousers and a shirt. She'd have loved a shower, too, and then felt selfish and ungrateful of such shallow thoughts.

'Keep your sleeves rolled down,' suggested Roger when she emerged from the mud hut after changing. 'Otherwise you'll burn tomorrow in daylight.'

'Thanks,' she replied moodily. 'I think I'll try and make a meal. Can you show me where tinned food is kept?' It was very domestic and rather stereotypical, but it would take her mind off the unpromising situation.

It took a while, trial and error, a broken tin opener and searching with a torch amongst tins stored in a decrepit mud hut, but Sarah managed a very passable stew, cooked in a big metal ammunition box she scrubbed clean with sand.

'Tinned stew, tinned potatoes, tinned beans, salt and other bits and pieces,' she declared proudly. 'Cooked over three of those little spirit stoves.'

Tam and Davey were taken dixies of the stew, fell upon it gratefully and devoured it in minutes.

'That were fu- hmph! – that were great,' declared Tam, handing back the empty dixie. Davey was too busy scoffing his to reply, soaking up the remains with a stale wad.

Sarah stood back and looked at the impressive construction the two soldiers had made. A great six-foot high arc of sandbags, behind which were ammunition boxes of .303 bullets. Two Vickers machine guns had been set up to fire between narrow slots in the sandbag barrier.

'Doctor Smith said a thick enough barrier of metal would stop the ray guns,' explained Tam. 'And we've got the sandbags, too.'

'This is solid ground, as well. We're not going to get glassed.'

The Doctor rapidly took over one of the mud huts, one which had been used by the depot staff to store tools. He cleared a space on the floor, laid out a tarpaulin with a rock at each corner, then returned to the crate containing the x-ray equipment.

'Now I miss the sonic screwdriver,' he grumbled to the night, having to very carefully lever the lid off the crate. The delicate equipment within had been wrapped in muslin, then linen, then restrained with wooden braces and the crate filled with sawdust. A lining of thick foil held the sawdust in place.

'Oh. Radium. Well, we'll just have to work with that,' he said, seeing the symbol stencilled on the outer casing of the equipment and leaving it on the tarpaulin.

His next problem came when he snooped around the hut, failing to find any tools sufficiently small or precise, so he went to find Roger, who was smoking a cigarette and pointing out constellations to Sarah.

'I could get you screwdrivers and an adjustable wrench.'

'No! That just won't do! I need precision instruments, not – yes, Sarah?'

'Would a dentist's stuff be any good?'

'Yes! Yes it would!' enthused her mentor.

'Remember Roger showing us around when we'd just got here? There was a dentists drill on display.'

'Brilliant!' grinned the Doctor, shaking Sarah's hand madly. He tracked down the depot inventory and read the flimsies until finding what he wanted, then dashed off.

'I suppose he know's what he's doing?' asked Roger. The seemingly-demented Doctor Smith had proved to be extremely clever and quick, but cooking up a bomb that only existed in pulp magazines – that was a bit of a stretch, even for an imagination that had been stretched considerably already.

'Oh yes,' replied Sarah with absolute assurance. 'If he says he can, then he can.'

Detachment Leader Icono deposited the mystery Artefact alongside a Science Support building at the Infiltration Complex, sliding it off the Transport Car via the manipulators.

Incredible! The blue box simply appeared out of nowhere in the path of the interception convoy moving to meet that life-signs trace. First the desert stretched in front of them, barren,endless and empty, the next – there the big box stood. The fodder had moved to investigate the new arrival, until they all dropped where they stood under the stun rays.

Uncomfortably aware that the aliens of this world did not have matter transmission technology, Icono immediately knew the artefact was important. So, he brought it along. It could be analysed at the Infiltration Complex.

More good news awaited him when he returned to the HQ building; the trans-mat was operational once more, test packages having been successfully sent from Homeworld and back there.

'Excellent!' Which was mostly true. Lord Excellency Sur might not appreciate the losses suffered by the Warriors under Icono's leadership, and Evisceration might be on the horizon. Only "might". With all the ingested life energies acquired from this planet's fodder, over sixty of the surviving Warriors were budding. A dozen new Warrior offspring, small and reedy yet, were being rehearsed and drilled. So the losses weren't as bad as seemed to begin with – or at least that's how Icono hoped Lord Excellency Sur, would feel.

He went to look at the artefact.

'It has no openings in the outer shell, Leader,' said a Warrior technician. 'A completely sealed unit.'

The Technician's posture, leaning backwards, expressed more surprise.

'And?'

'I'm not entirely sure of this, Leader, but we used an infrasonic generator to try and determine the artefact's internal layout.'

'Yes, yes, carry on.' Icono knew what infrasonics were used for – to process minerals by the kilotonne. Under infrasonic stimulation different ores and minerals could be separated out from sand.

The technician pointed over to the artefact, with cables trailing to the big, cone-shaped ultrasonic generator butted up against it.

'A pulse would penetrate the object, and be reflected back from the internal structure, allowing us to plot the layout.' Another hesitation. 'The pulse took an hour to return.'

Icono had anticipated a revelation about the object being solid, or full of liquid, or perhaps live aliens. Hearing "an hour" he stared hard at his minion.

'An hour? Why so long? How long ought a reflected pulse to take?'

'Ah – approximately eighty milliseconds, Leader. By implication, this object is far larger on the inside than it is on the outside. By a factor of several hundred thousand.'

An astonished Icono walked over to the artefact. There it was, upright, innocent, and apparently made of that compacted fibrous material used to obstruct the approach to the HQ building.

Yet to be larger on the inside!

'Er – these aliens do not have the technology to create a five-dimensional object, Leader. They are mechanically ingenious, yes, yet still millenia away from such an artefact.'

Icono nodded, thinking.

'This couldn't be an example of trans-mat gone wrong?'

The technician waved his hands.

'No, Leader. Without a reception platform, an object could not be sent. The gravity-lens technique used for the Infiltration Complex will only work for objects of similar dimensions.'

'Who else knows of this?'

'Nobody yet, Leader – AH!' grunted the technician as Icono Eviscerated him, draining the hapless minion until his dessicated husk lay shrivelled on the sands.

'Useless drone!' shouted Icono, to create the wrong impression. 'Dismantle that generator. Reel in that cable. Send out a Transport Car to haul in one of the immobilised alien vehicles for recycling!'

Twenty Two: A Bigger Bang 

The ten human survivors at Mersa Martuba spent an uneasy night, one person taking it in turns to be on sentry duty. This amounted to standing on the platform mounted over the mud huts, looking to the east.

Perhaps the "ten humans" could have been amended to "nine humans and one Gallifreyan". The Doctor forbade anyone to enter his appropriated mud hut, citing the need to keep conditions as near sterile as possible. He also wanted to prevent any twentieth century inhabitant witnessing scientific methodology from several centuries in the future. Sarah's inspired suggestion about dental tools bore fissile fruit by dawn the next morning as a gritty-eyed Doctor downed his tools, taking care not to scratch or rub his eyes.

'Mine own executioner,' he murmured, folding arms and looking at the improvised weapon. He had needed to leave the hut several times in order to obtain stand-in material for the "device" – foil for a reflective inner surface, cordite carefully arrayed in a spherical layer, signal wire between the two hundred and sixteen blank .303 cartridges on the outside of the football-sized object.

Crude, hurried and liable to misfire, it was still the most potent single explosive object this world had ever seen. Trinity would not take place for another four years; the thousand-bomber raids over Europe were still years away; the suitcase-sized Atomic Demolition Munition was decades away. The Doctor's "football" sat on the tarpaulin, with a yield he estimated as between (at best) 0.225 kilotonnes and (worst case, crossed fingers not working) 0.015 kilotonnes.

'Looks like a Dada hairdryer,' observed an irreverent Sarah, looking in through the blanket that overhung the doorway.

'This "hairdryer" would give a permanent wave truly permanent in nature. Permanent meaning for ever.'

'Ah,' replied Sarah, well-versed in when her mentor was being serious. As he was now. 'Your home-made atomic bomb?' A silent nod proved her correct. 'So all we have to do is get it to the dig and – hey presto! – no invasion?' She clapped her hands together to emphasise the "hey presto".

Despite himself, the Doctor found a grin rising to his face.

'Sarah, you have a way of putting things that cuts to the crux of the matter! Yes. If we want humanity and planet Earth to continue, the trans-mat must be destroyed.'

Over a frugal breakfast of jam and toasted wad, he enlarged on that matter with the other survivors. His first statement was heavy with import.

'I have constructed a bomb that will destroy the bio-vore's entire complex of buildings at the Makin Al-Jinni dig.'

For several seconds congratulatory noises could be heard, until Albert asked the key question.

'How do we get it there?'

Sarah threw her arms wide.

'Any suggestions welcome! Come on, come on, you're all old desert hands. You must have suggestions.'

'Our enemies have no conception of heavier-than-air flight. An aircraft would stand a good chance of getting into the defended area,' commented the Doctor, in both English and Italian.

'No aeroplanes?' asked Davey. Tenente Dominione looked at his fellow Italians and shot a series of questions at them.

'There are Italian aircraft on forward airfields near Bir El Daba. Fighters and bombers. Unfortunately it is a hundred kilometres away.'

'I can fly, after a fashion,' said Albert nonchalantly, dipping a stale wad into his tea. 'Learned in the University Air Squadron, after the Munich Crisis.'

'You never told me that!' exclaimed a surprised Professor Templeman.

'Ah, they wouldn't let me carry on to become a dashing RAF pilot. Perforated ear-drum. Good thing for me, or I'd probably not be here now. Still, I reckon I could fly a single-engine job with a few hours to practice.'

'How does your porcupine of a bomb work, Doctor Smith?' asked Roger.

'If an electrical current is applied to this wired cartridge, all two hundred and sixteen cartridges will fire at once. That produces reasonably uniform detonation of the inner cordite liner, which creates a spherical implosion that forces the fissile core into a supercritical mass thanks to velocity of displacement.'

Roger looked sideways at Sarah, who shrugged and nodded.

'Ah. Right.'

'That is, _if_ everything works properly in sequence.'

Davey asked more questions.

'Why don't they have any aircraft?'

The Doctor shrugged. He didn't know for certain, so he took his best guess.

'Lack of metals, timber or fabric for building them. No fuel to power them, no avian wildlife to emulate. There may have been birds on Wasteworld at one time, millenia ago. Of course they died when their habitats were consumed, or they were directly consumed by the bio-vores.'

That brought a tug of memory to his mind. Lord Boasting Fuhrer Sur, that bloated pompous windbag, seemed familiar with flying creatures. Odd, considering –

'We have a bit of a problem with that "Lance Fiamme", Doctor,' said Dominione.

The Doctor closed his eyes, feeling tired. He needed to wash his hands thoroughly, to get rid of any radium particles picked up during construction of the bomb.

Dominione carried on. The weapon was actually for mounting in a tankette, was five feet long, muzzle-heavy, needed to be electrically operated and worked from a 120 litre drum. Impossible for a single person to carry.

'Put it in one of the Saharianas,' said Sarah. 'In the passenger seat. Stick it over the bonnet, rivet it there, Bob's your uncle.'

'No he isn't,' replied Dominione, puzzled.

'I meant - ' began Sarah.

'If you'll give me a minute or two to rest, I'll wire up the flame-thrower to the ignition system of your car,' offered the Doctor, yawning massively.

Roger hushed the others and they left the sleeping Time Lord for an hour before rousing him.

Lord Excellency Sur, pressured by his fellow aristocrats, was going to travel to Target World Seventeen himself. Not alone, of course. He would be accompanied by a thousand Warriors, going into the trans-mat in relays.

Originally he'd only petitioned for four hundred Warriors to be awoken from hibernation. His peers, unhappy at the escape of an alien and heretic from custody in Sur's own castle, ordered twice that many to be sent. Then they added another two hundred, just in case. No mercy for any alien fodder at the other end of the trans-mat was their implicit message, and no room for blunder on the part of Sur.

Sending so many Warriors meant that logistics became a major issue. Bottled algae would need to be harvested and sent through in huge amounts, so the Farmers needed to be chivvied into working harder, and a few Eviscerated. "Pour encourage les autres" wasn't a phrase Sur knew, although he would have approved of it entirely.

A huge combat contingent wasn't the only novelty. On the authority of the collective coastal aristocracy, heavy weapons unused in centuries were taken out of storage, re-assembled and tested. They were sledged to the departure platform and sent with the first wave of Warriors.

Lord Excellency Sur arrived with his personal bodyguard as part of the second wave of arrivals. Trying to maintain a semblance of imposing dignity, he kept his cape on and made sure to swirl it commandingly.

Target World Seventeen! he exulted when the unfamiliar surroundings of the Infiltration Complex appeared in place of the departure platform. Hot, and dry. No moisture in the air. Nowhere near the sea, then.

His bodyguard hustled him off the platform, allowing another consignment of bottled algae to come through.

Assault Detachment Leader Icono hurried over to Sur, bowing and grovelling with just the right amount of subservience. Sur knew that the Regional Leader back on Homeworld, Boma, didn't feel very positive about Icono's performance so far. Too many casualties.

'Lord Excellency Sur! Permit this worthless minion to present you with an alien trophy, recovered from the desert,' rattled off Icono, knowing that to preserve his life he needed to divert Sur.

'What defences do you have in place to protect the trans-mat?' barked Sur, equally aware that to preserve his rank, if not his life, he needed to be managing matters efficiently in the eyes of his peers. At least one member of his bodyguard, and doubtless more amongst the newly-awoken Warriors, would be working for his fellow aristocrats, feeding back information via couriers and coded message sheets.

Icono presented an itemised rota and inventory, and he presented it quickly.

"Permanent perimeter patrol of three Sentinels.

Random pattern patrol of five Warrior groups numbering ten in

each.

Life Signs Scanner 2 allocated to periodic sweep of Infiltration

Complex.

HQ projection-fusor programmed to deliver 360 degree molten

protective barrier.

Three Transport Cars mounting heavy stun cannon on call."

Thus read Sur. He could not find any obvious failings, so he waved a dismissive arm at Icono.

'What is the trophy you mentioned?'

Eagerly, the Detachment Leader showed his superior a large blue cuboid.

Sur leaned backwards in exaggerated surprise.

'A blue box! How outstanding! What shortage of blue, boxlike objects Homeworld has! Truly, this is a trophy beyond compare!'

The Detachment Leader turned back to the object, indicating it with an outstretched arm, ready to describe how unusual it was, and what dimensionally-transcendent qualities it possessed.

Unfortunately he never got the chance, as Lord Excellency Sur Eviscerated Icono the instant the latter's back was turned.

'Nearest Sub-Leader!' shouted Sur. A heavily-laden bio-vore jogged over to him.

'Assault Detachment Sub-Leader Kotani, Lord Excellency,' snapped the new arrival, astute enough not to cast a look at Icono's shrivelled remains.

'You are now the Detachment Leader. Notarise Homeworld with the next courier despatch.'

Sur swirled his cape, looking with disbelief at the big blue box. Conditions here must have unsettled Icono's mind, to think such a thing was remotely interesting!

Group Captain Windermere, sitting propped on his chair, looked doubtfully at Major Hampson of the Royal Army Service Corps.

'I don't have any orders to follow,' he pointed out to the soldier. 'And my chaps are fully stretched at the mo. Ferrying aircraft to Crete and Greece, attacking Tripoli, establishing new airstrips in virgin desert, helping watch the Med. I can't really spare anyone to go scooting around on anything as insubstantial as a hunch.'

Major Hampson sighed and nodded. Very well then, it came down to bribery.

'Look, sir, a hundred men in Murraycol went off on my say-so. We've heard nothing from them and can't contact them ourselves. The depot and staff come under my responsibility, and by second-hand information I know they suffered casualties. All I want to know is what is or isn't happening at Mersa Martuba.'

With that, he put a four-gallon petrol tin on the Group Captain's desk. Wordlessly, he undid a catch at the base, releasing the whole upper part of the tin, which he removed. A bottle of Caribbean over-proof rum occupied the inside of the tin.

'My chaps are stretched pretty tight,' continued the Group Captain, eyeing the bottle with appreciation. 'That's my chaps. We do have the GMC on Middle East Desert Air Force strength, and they _aren't_ my chaps.'

Major Hampson tried to look interested.

' "GMC"?' he asked.

'Free French pilots. "Groupe Mixte de Combat". Dour lot. No sporting chivalry of the air for them – killing Bosche or the Eyeties is their idea of a good time.'

The cover went back on the petrol tin and Group Captain Windermere took charge of it with the avid attention of a parent cradling a child.

'They fly Lysanders and Blenheim ground-attack birds. We'll ask them to conduct a familiarisation flight, see what's up at your depot.'

'I expect it's nothing, really. I just want to make sure.'

Trans-mat platforms couldn't send telecommunications between each other. Thus, information between Homeworld and Target Seventeen was exchanged by sending inscribed scrolls or bio-vore couriers. In the case of Lord Excellency Sur's edict on speeding up algae production, the demand came as an inscribed scroll, one which bore the elaborate house crest of Sur. It was passed to the most important bio-vore on duty at the trans-mat station.

Senior Overseer Fosor unrolled the scroll and read it before passing it on to a party of Warrior guards and his assistant, Sub-Senior Overseer Kosadi. Kosadi read the declaration once, then again, more slowly.

'A five-fold increase in algae production?' he echoed, staring at Fosor. '_And_ Eviscerate Farmers?'

The senior stared back at Kosadi.

'What is your reticence due to?'

'Simple fact!' retorted Kosadi. 'Even trying to achieve an increase in production by a factor of five is over-ambitious. To attempt to drive it by killing those who are trying to produce the algae is – is - ' He struggled to find the correct word.

'Enough discussion,' said Fosor, comparatively mildly. 'Implement the coercion.'

"Stupid" was the word Kosadi had been reaching for, thought Fosor. A very apt word. A stupid decision taken for stupid reasons.

Wait! he shouted silently, catching himself. I never used to question the aristos like this. And if a junior ever expressed lack of support for the aristos, then it was automatic punishment for them.

May the cold and dark take him! What had thrown his mind so far off-track? The turmoil and excitement of recent days must have been responsible.

If so, he wasn't the only one. As a Senior, Fosor got access to restricted information in limited circulation. Today's statistics bore heavy import: algae production declined in daily terms by three per cent. A three per cent fall - unseen for decades. And Sur wanted to get five hundred per cent from what was only ninety seven per cent at best!

There was more. A hundred and fifty Farmers failed to report for work yesterday. Normally there would be accidents, abscondments, all sorts of eventualities amongst the eighty five thousand Farmers under Sur's region. Never so many as a hundred and fifty. Perhaps that shortfall in algae production could be blamed on missing Farmers?

Even more worrying, an Overseer and half a dozen Warriors were missing. They were members of the elite, able to Eviscerate humble Farmers. So why were they absent? Where could they have gone? Bulletins were circulating amongst the other coastal cities, giving descriptions and asking for details if the missing were encountered.

It was all most, most worrying.

Fosor would have been further alarmed by events later that day on the littoral. Five Warriors were assigned to track down and Eviscerate any lone Farmers, any found wandering about without enough licence or permission, any deemed not to be working hard enough. They began from the barracks at the fringe of the Trans-Mat complex, planning to work northwards along the shore.

Pickings were not good. The Farmers at first stood far out in the shallows, flecked with the algae, working away with nets and scoops. There were solo workers, yes, but none of the Warriors deemed it dignified to wade out into the waters.

Occasional groups of Farmers trudged to and from the depths, bottling their harvested sea greens. None came singly.

Finally the Warrior group got fed up and picked on a group of three Farmers walking back into the shallows. With the traditional accusatory shout of "Transgressors!" the Warriors charged their prey.

Who fought back.

Stunned incomprehension at this unparalleled display of resistance cost the life of one Warrior, beaten to death with the solid end of a net-pole. When the short, brutal fight was over the Farmers had been Eviscerated, but another Warrior suffered near-fatal injuries. His surviving comrades duly Eviscerated him, before he could protest or petition that he ought to live.

Worried that they might be Eviscerated themselves if the details of the botched ambush got out, the three Warriors didn't make out a report of what had happened.

"Boccata il Dragone": the words now graced the bonnet of Dominione's Sahariana, painted on in white matt, paint discovered by Sarah in one of the mud huts. She had hauled fuel in the leaking, flimsy petrol tins from Supply Stack E14, filling up the huge drum that fed the flamethrower. This drum sat where a passenger would have been, securely strapped onto the seat. Projecting over the dashboard and the bonnet was the flame gun itself, riveted into place. The curved, beak-like muzzle hung slightly forward of the front bumper, deliberately, to prevent any burning petrol from falling onto the car.

True to his word, the Doctor wired up the flamethrower to the Sahariana's ignition system, enabling the fuel to be pressurised and fired. Torrevechio gleefully tried the weapon out, sending a streak of smoking fuel fifty yards over the sands. Fortunately, he possessed enough foresight to turn the car away from any stacks in the depot, so the only victim was the desert gravel.

'What does that mean, Sarah?' asked Roger, pointing to the bonnet.

'Roughly, "breath of the dragon". I'm not quite sure about the grammar, but I like the sentiment.'

'I don't think Doctor Smith does. He's gone off to brood.'

With a disdainful jerk of his thumb, Roger indicated the Doctor, sitting on a crate, looking deeply morose.

'He just doesn't like death and killing, Roger.'

The young officer eyed Sarah, wondering if she was pulling his leg.

'Nor do I, especially as it might be me getting killed to death.'

This nadir in the conversation ended when Tam came over to ask if the radio was still U/S? Roger went off with the Geordie NCO to try, once again, to get in touch with a higher formation.

Sarah climbed up alongside the Doctor.

'Don't sit in a brown study all day! What ails you?'

Making a visible effort, her companion and mentor turned his gaze from the horizon, looking sombrely into her eyes.

'I heard your comment about death and killing, Sarah. It does pain me to resort to violence, all the more when it is so extreme.'

'We don't have a choice!' retorted Sarah hotly. 'Those bio-vores will wipe us out and go on to infest the whole planet!'

The Doctor said nothing, merely staring sadly at her.

'Besides which, we still haven't got a way to get your home-made bomb into the trans-mat site. And it might not go off if we did get it there. And there's still the greedy monsters left on their homeworld, all ready to come back here.'

This time the Doctor shook his head.

'Not this planet, Sarah. The microlens that allowed the bio-vores to land their platform here has long since devolved.'


	12. Chapter 12

Twenty Three: Death from above - and below 

Lord Excellency Sur was not given to admitting mistakes. For one thing, that would make him vulnerable to potential challengers from below. Secondly, he rarely, if indeed ever, made mistakes.

Now, having had a dozen Warriors unsuccessfully try to smash the blue cuboid apart with granite hammers and glass hatchets, he felt a touch of ruefulness at having killed Icono so hurriedly.

The object stood no taller than he did. From the outside it was composed of "wood", as the locals termed it. The most obvious asset was the blue colouration.

Except that none of that was accurate. None of it. The wooden composition was fake, as was the colour; remote televisual monitoring showed the device in monochrome. This blue cuboid had no apparent ingress point. It's mass had been calculated as being in the kilotonnes, an anachronism to the factor of five hundred.

'Send it back home!' blustered Sur, wondering what the device was, and how to exploit it's presence on Homeworld. Better get rid of it here, since the local aliens were pretty adept at making trouble with nothing in hand.

The device was placed alongside a series of reports and outputs, then couriered back to Homeworld.

Next would come a sweep across the deserts to find more live fodder. According to the situation reports so far, a storage site existed to the west. That was the extent of local life-forms. Clearly the Infiltration Complex was not situated in a viable area, because from listening in to the radio-waves, the alien culture on Target Seventeen was obviously widespread.

Consider it a challege, the bio-vore aristocrat told himself. A challenge to be met and overcome!

Sarah felt both worried and annoyed at the Doctor's continued sulking, as she saw it, atop his crate. The bio-vores must have fixed their matter transmitter by now, and would be arriving by the hundred – and yet the Doctor sat and brooded, doing nothing!

She tried again to coax him down.

'Not even for a cup of tea? With extra sugar?'

All she got in reply was a sigh.

'Oh be like that then!' she crossly responded, turning to leave. Jumping down, the Doctor forestalled her with a hand on her shoulder.

'Time is running out, Sarah. The Germans will be here very soon, and by then we _must_ have resolved the matter of the bio-vores. I dread to think what would happen if the aliens gain access to several thousand victims.'

Sarah tutted and folded her arms.

'The Afrika Corps are presumably armed to the teeth? Surely they'll manage to cope with our large friends.'

Her companion shook his head violently.

'No! That is not what must happen! The Germans and their allies need to take this depot with no trouble. Not only that, Sarah, there's also the matter of our transport. I don't know for certain, not yet, but I strongly suspect that Sur has the TARDIS. An exploitative parasite like him, along with his ruling culture, cannot be allowed access to temporal travel. Cannot and will not!'

Those last four word came back to haunt Sarah very quickly indeed. When she moved back to the heart of the depot, seeking any loose or spare tins of food that might be used to create a giant stew, Davey swiftly moved in alongside her.

'Get you to the Lieutenant,' growled the Scot, emphasising his order with a bayonet affixed to the end of his rifle.

Sarah discovered the Doctor at the end of a bayonet, Corporal Mickleborough's, in attendance on Lieutenant Llewellyn, who cradled a tommy-gun.

'What's going on!' she asked, with a plaintive tone that made both Tam and Davey look accusingly at their officer. Roger looked at Sarah with an unpleasant intensity.

'Miss Smith, I was working around the supply stacks at the W34 level and happened to discover you and Doctor Smith discussing ways to deliver this depot into enemy hands.'

Sarah goggled in frank astonishment at this accusation.

'What! You think we're a couple of German spies!' She turned to spur the Doctor into a rebuttal.

'We're not spies, Lieutenant Llewellyn. And, historically, this depot did fall into German hands. We consequently need to make sure that is what happens, to remain historically correct.'

Oh no! shouted Sarah internally. He's gone and blown the whole thing!

'What do you mean, "did"? "Historically"?' asked Roger. 'Stop talking rubbish!'

'I think we need to reveal our secret, Sarah,' stage-whispered the Doctor.

The Italians, minus Torrevechio, came to listen to the interesting argument going on between the English.

'What secret! How much the Huns are paying you?' snapped Roger, not happy that he wasn't being taken seriously. If that woman wasn't present –

'We come from what you would call the future,' announced the Doctor cheerily. Sarah rolled her eyes in exasperation, worried that the Doctor, in his boundless enthusiasm and ingenousness, was going to get them both locked up.

Roger merely sneered, whilst Davey nodded at Tam and grinned mockingly, tapping the side of his head.

Grumpily, Sarah thrust her hands into her pockets, feeling change from her linen trousers clink about.

'Oh, great, Doctor. Now not only are we German spies, we're _insane_ German spies – oh – hang on a minute.'

She held out a handful of change to Roger, who squinted suspiciously at the coins.

'Go on – take a look at those. Go on, they won't bite!'

Slowly, Roger took one of the coins, shaking his head in resigned dismissal. The look on his face changed to one of consternation.

"Elizabeth II. Ninenteen Eighty One!' he exclaimed. He looked at other coins. "Fifty Pence piece, Silver Jubilee. Nineteen Seventy Seven! What the hell are these?'

'Acceptable coins of the realm,' said the Doctor, calmly.

'She's a Princess, not the Queen,' added Tam, confused. 'Princess Elizabeth.'

'Crowned in 1952,' the Doctor said in an aside.

'You're barmy,' added Davey. His voice lacked surety.

'Who wins the next Cup Final?' asked Tam aggressively.

With a look of icy superiority, the Doctor looked down his patrician nose and dismissed the question.

'I don't follow – _football_.'

'Never mind that, who wins this damn war?' asked Roger, with feeling.

'Oh, the Allies do,' said the Doctor airily. Roger leaned closer, wanting more detail. Sighing, the Doctor carried on. 'In less than three months the German Army, with contingents from Rumania, Italy and Hungary, will invade the Soviet Union. Before the year is out the United States will be fighting the Germans and Japanese.'

This news fell on disbelieving ears.

'The Jerries and the Ruskies are best pals,' argued Tam.

'They are not!' replied Sarah hotly. 'They avoided fighting each other so they could pick on other countries.'

'What about here in the desert?' asked Dominione, once the speeches were translated.

Imperiously, the Doctor waved his arms.

'Mixed fortunes for both sides. The British and Commonwealth finally win the decisive battle of the desert war at El Alamein and that seals the doom of the Axis in the desert.'

Everyone listening exchanged glances. Albert drew the Professor aside and asked questions about temporal paradoxes, leading into a heated debate.

'_El Alamein_! That's practically at the gates of Cairo!' objected Roger, his tone as hot as Sarah's of a few seconds before.

'My uncles fought there,' added Sarah, confusing past and present. 'I mean, they will fight there.'

'You're both completely bloody potty,' snarled Roger, 'absolutely round the twist.'

Torrevechio shrugged his shoulders fluidly and spouted a stream of Italian, mimicking an elephant with one arm flapping against his face.

'Quite,' replied the Doctor, drily. 'He says belieiving Sarah and I come from the future is less difficult than believing in column-like creatures who drain life.'

That riposte stopped Roger dead in his rant.

Damn it, they had to be lying! Except why would they make up such a bizarre, not to mention insane, story and expect people to believe it? Then there were those coins. And the nose-goblins. So far, in fact, neither of the two had been caught out in sabotage.

Albert and Templeman were arguing with each other over whether time-travel was possible in theory. Albert held that it was, the Professor denied the slightest chance.

'Suppose we accept your story? What have you come to the past to do, or see, or get?'

That took a little explaining. The Doctor, drawing on historical knowledge rarely needed and a bit rusty in the recall, informed his audience that the Afrika Korps would be here by the beginning of April. If the bio-vores were not dealt with by then, the arrival of thousands of humans would simply provide the aliens with thousands of victims. Nor could they assume the bio-vores would be vulnerable in the future as they were in the past. They might lack the wheel, petroleum and aircraft, but they were still highly advanced; their recent encounters would have been analysed and studied, with countermeasures devised.

Albert and the Professor were still arguing, intensity undimmed.

'Then we have the matter of my transport. My time-machine, you might call it.' Sarah translated for the Italians and Dominione perked up.

'As in the romance by Hubert George Wells?' he asked.

'Mine is considerably more secure, Tenente. Which is a good thing, as I am fairly certain the bio-vores have captured it.'

'Bit careless, that,' said Roger in an undertone. Sarah caught the tone of the words, if not their content, and glared at the officer.

'You said your transport was destroyed,' recalled Davey. 'Back when we found you in the desert.'

'Misplaced, yes, but not destroyed. Attacking the TARDIS does that. Transposes her, I mean.'

The conversation led to a logical conclusion: that the Doctor needed to get his transport back from the bio-vores. He couldn't do this openly, since the aliens might very well kill him on sight. The human – or, as in his case, humanoid – form differed from the bio-vores so much that he couldn't move around openly.

That left sneaking in, which would be equally difficult, except in the case of potential Trojan Horses left out on the sands – the abandoned Sahariana's. Doretti, the Italian radio operator acting as sentry atop the wooden platform, reported that parties of bio-vores would venture from their desert fastness to drag away the desert cars one at a time.

Sheer inevitability, as the Doctor knew. The bio-vores came from a metal-deficient environment. Those Sahariana's represented an incredible free mineral bounty, too much temptation to resist.

Which was why, an hour later, he hung underneath the hot, rusty, oily undercarriage of a Sahariana, roped securely to the exhaust system. The plan was to sneak in, get the TARDIS and sneak out back to Mersa Martuba. Simple, and no need to use the atom bomb just yet. Simple if everything went smoothly.

Sarah joined Doretti on the viewing platform, using the Doctor's own telescope to check on his situation. The car he chose lay almost beyond view from Mersa Martuba, a static speck on the shimmering, baking gravel.

Phew! If I get home safe from this I promise never to moan about a London summer again! she promised herself. Doretti took pity on her and offered his fatigue cap to shade her head. Sarah regarded the dirty, greasy article with misgivings, but felt relieved when the Italian insisted she take it and put it on.

Is it making my head buzz? she wondered. There aren't any flies out here. So what is making that noise?

Doretti, however, manifested an air of confused attention, casting around for the source of the noise Sarah could hear.

'What could that be?' he asked. Sarah shrugged.

'Oh no! It's coming from the dig – have those monsters discovered the Doctor?'

She swept the sands with the telescope, whilst Doretti used binoculars, neither being able to spot aliens.

'Hey!' called Albert from below. 'There's an aircraft!' He pointed out to the east.

A mosquito-like blob rapidly resolved itself into an airplane, a high-wing monoplane that flew low and slow, getting lower by the second. Sliding rapidly down the crude ladder and collecting splinters, Sarah raced over to Albert. The engine sounded ragged and uneven.

Dominione had thought faster than anyone, revving up one of the desert cars and moving across the main route in the depot, throwing up a cloud of dust.

The oncoming plane flew lower and lower, eventually rebounding high into the air several times in false landings before settling into a long, slow taxi amidst huge dust clouds, engine revving and misfiring intermittently. Dominione raced over the gravel after the still-moving aircraft, vanishing into the obscuring cloud. The closer he got, the more obvious signs of damage became; several of the windscreen panels were shattered, the fuselage was rent and both wings sported narrow holes.

Even though the plane had landed, the pilot didn't stop the engine, which continued to send volumes of stinging grit and sand into Dominione's face. Finally the engine coughed violently and died, visibility cleared and the officer drew level with the cockpit.

'Ah! The devil take it!' he muttered, seeing the pilot lying face-down over the controls. 'Those monsters have killed another.'

Not quite, or not yet. The pilot groaned when the cockpit door grated open. Shards of shattered glass, edged like razors, lay on the cockpit floor.

Being as careful as he could, Dominione managed to get the dying man into the Sahariana, getting liberally doused with blood. Sarah and Lieutenant Llewellyn met him at the entrance to the depot, where he stopped.

'The pilot. He was injured by the monsters, and I fear he is dying,' explained the Italian.

Climbing into the Sahariana, Sarah found a canteen of water and tried to wet the pilot's mouth. He was young, handsome and dying in front of her. Blood oozed out of a dozen puncture wounds that ripped holes in his tunic.

'Drink this,' she murmured, biting her lip.

'Une femme?' he whispered, opening his eyes. 'Oui! C'est une bonne femme,' he said, closing his eyes and smiling a little, before gasping once.

That was the last sound he made, and they buried him alongside the recently-dug grave of Sergente Capriccio. Sarah wept openly at the grave, crying into a grubby handkerchief Roger offered her. When her tears finally stopped she felt hollow yet steeled by a bitter determination.

'That's it!' she hissed, after a long series of curses.

'Miss Smith!' exclaimed Albert.

'There were a few words I've never heard in there,' muttered Davey to Tam.

'We get ready to defeat those monsters while the Doctor is gone!'

'He warned us not to attack them,' said Dominione when she translated. He stood in shirtsleeves, having discarded his uniform jacket, stained with the pilot's blood.

'Not attacking. Defending! Lieutenant, I want that tank dragged to face eastwards, with plenty of shells for it.'

Roger considered telling her that the A13 still weighed a hell of a lot even with the engine gone, and with the engine gone you couldn't drive it – he considered, and decided not to. That Miss Smith was a most determined gal when she put her mind to it!

'Then we need a barrier, a method of concealing ourselves. A smokescreen, for instance.'

Davey paged through the collection of flimsies left to them by the Doctor.

'Here we go – smoke candles. Stack E3.'

'There's the Sahariana with the flame-thrower,' reminded Torrevechio.'Ghastly thing!' commented Sarah. 'It needs protection for whoever drives it. Otherwise they'll just drop senseless when those monsters get into range.' She translated.

'Glass doesn't seem to stop the ray guns. Metal did. A solid metal screen would protect the driver,' mused Dominione.

'Very good! Get onto it!' ordered Sarah. 'Then we have a hundred and twenty bottles of liquer that make good substitute petrol bombs. Albert, I want you to go and have a look at the aircraft, see if it can be flown.'

Albert frowned.

'I don't know,' he began. 'It looks hit pretty hard by – that is - oh alright,' he finished weakly, under Sarah's beady glare.

They moved the immobilised A13 by dragging it, attaching two Saharianas and a truck by tow cables, then using the corner of a mud hut for extra leverage. The clutch on the truck burnt out, which was small beer when compared to the benefits of having a fully-protected metal fort to defend with. Both of the tank's engine covers were unbolted and used to make a shield for the Sahariana carrying the flamethrower, one slatted metal plate in front of the driver, the other wired to it and positioned to his left, covering the open flank there. The metal drum containing petrol sat alongside the driver to the right, protecting him from rays on that flank.

'Open at the rear. To retreat, one must select reverse gears,' explained Torrevechio.

Albert swept the Lysander cockpit clear of glass shards, poured sand on the spilt blood and then swept out that sand. He sat in the pilot's seat, uncomfortably aware of the rents torn in it. The engine turned over when he identified and pressed the starter button, running fitfully. Must have copped flak.

Instead of a RAF roundel on the fuselage, the Lysander had a Cross of Lorraine, and the lettering "FAFL".

'Free French Air Force,' translated Albert. "Marengo" had been painted onto the nose in white lettering.

He reported these facts back to Sarah. Essentially, the plane could fly. Not for long, given the uneven way the engine ran. Plus, he hadn't flown in over two years.

'Free French?' asked Sarah. British, Australians, Italians, now there were French in this insane war fought in a baking broiling wilderness.

'Oh aye, a real united nations we are. Poles, Greeks, Czechs, Kiwis, Indians,' Davey told her, unboxing belts of machine gun ammunition.

'Sounds a little like UNIT!' smiled Sarah, finding amusement in small things, since they were all that were amusing at present.

'Eh? Unit of what?'

'No – U – N – I – T. "United Nations Intelligence Taskforce." Sort of world police in the future. Well, provided we deal with these monsters.'

Twenty Four: The Idea 

The Doctor's horizon was very limited – the underside of an Italian Army Sahariana desert car. He didn't know how long it would take before the bio-vores came out to drag the car away, which meant enduring several hours of excruciating dullness, flexing his joints from neck to ankle in a routine to stop boredom or constriction affecting him.

The only diversion that occurred was the sound of an aircraft, getting nearer and closer, until it vanished to the west. After that, nothing happened. Whilst unable to check his watch or the half-hunter in his pocket, this long period of tedium might have been thirty minutes or many hours.

Faint squeaking and rattling warned and wakened him from a half-doze, incredible as he found that. The strange noise grew louder and nearer, until he could see a black chassis on squashed, semi-fluid track pontoons. The sturdy limbs of a dozen bio-vores appeared, dragging thin cabling behind them. These cables were applied to the car's bodywork and, jerkily, the Sahariana was towed slowly off.

Thankfully the vehicle's ground clearance was high, so he suffered only occasional bumps and scratches from the desert floor. This slow progress became slower once the towing bio-vores moved onto loose sand, until they stopped briefly.

Hot as it was underneath the car, it swiftly became even hotter as the two vehicles moved forward again. Sweat beaded on the Doctors bare skin, and a blast of heat akin to an open oven struck his back.

Partially-cooled molten glass! he realised. The bio-vores had paused to allow a barrier of molten glass to cool sufficiently for the Sahariana to cross without sinking or bursting into flames. The sweat poured off him, sizzling when it hit the smooth, radiant surface of the glass; airless and scorching, the underside of the car reflected heat back at him. Stinking fumes from the tyres stung his eyes.

Then, abruptly, the heat vanished. Bare and dimpled sands beneath the Doctor's back replaced the patterned mirror of glass.

Aha! A moat! he realised. A barrier established around the dig to protect the bio-vores and their Infiltration Complex. Using geo-thermal power to keep it molten, directed from their science buildings.

Progress remained slow as the pair of vehicles crept up the inclined sands leading to the sand bowl, then became dangerously erratic on the opposite slope, the Sahariana sliding sideways and running forward.

With a _twang_! like the parting of a rubber-band, the tow cable snapped, shattering apart into glass strands, allowing the towing tank to rumble downwards in safety, and the Sahariana to end up free-wheeling down the wall of sand, across the level basin floor and into a revetment.

Battered, cut by flying glass and now wrenched, the Doctor hastily struggled to untie the rope holding his wrists to the exhaust pipe. His lessons from Harry came in handy, and by using his muscles, teeth and brute strength he worked free in half a minute, dropping to the ground and crawling away from the machine.

Only just in time – a group of bio-vores came stamping across the sands, to examine their new booty, exclaiming in surprise and awe at the amount of metal present in the alien artefact.

Sneaking away like a silent shadow, the Doctor realised there were far more bio-vores at the dig than he'd calculated for. Hundreds and hundreds – he needed to find the TARDIS immediately or he'd be caught.

And there it was, visible even in the shimmering air, sitting proudly and alone -

With horrible timing, a warning shout went up from a bio-vore patrol, who pointed and called to their colleagues. The Doctor stopped trying to sneak and took to his heels at high speed, hoping deperately to stay at liberty long enough to locate his time machine.

A few glass darts were fired at him, only for the firing to cease immediately: there were too many bio-vores present to have loose shards flying around. For the same reasom no stunners were used. Agility, a swiftness of pace and skill at rugby enabled him to duck and weave for over a minute as the ailens chased and tried to corrall him.

Coming to a dead stop, the Doctor was hit by a solid knot of bio-vores, bowled over and pounced upon. For all that, what really caused him to feel dismayed was the absence of the TARDIS, no longer resident on the platform.

It was gone.

Lord Excellency Sur gloated as he stepped off the trans-mat platform, looking behind him at the big blue box.

Physically transcendentant! A five dimensional object huge on the inside, compact on the outside. Alien, far beyond the technology of the aliens resident on Target World Seventeen.

With a short start of surprise, he realised the detachment on guard duty at the trans-mat here on Homeworld was far larger than normal. And one of his peers, Lord Excellency Url, stood in attendance at the control console.

'Thank you for deigning to wait on me,' chaffed Sur, swirling his cape. 'What honour do I have to thank for your presence?'

Url stared unamusedly at the new arrival and his big blue box.

'Whilst you have been – apparently acquiring property – whilst you have been away, we have been enduring trouble with the Farmers, Sur.'

Sur stopped his theatrical cape-twirling and goggled at Url. Trouble with the Farmers? Those lackeys? They were bred to be meek and submissive fodder and fodder raisers. What kind of trouble could they make!

'What kind of trouble?' he asked, gesturing his escort away to find transport for the cuboid trophy.

'Violence. Killing. Refusal to provide algae quotas.'

Sur bent backwards in sincere surprise. He couldn't speak for whole seconds.

'All happening in your bailiwick, Sur. Consequently, you are being held responsible.'

'Me! This is intrigue plotted by a rival, nothing more!' he blustered.

'The Farmers have killed Warriors, Sur!' snapped Url. 'Warriors. This is unheard of!'

Sur stomped off the platform to the console, genuinely unsettled at the news from Url, if it was in fact news and not some subterfuge. He shuddered to think of the potential threat to civilisation from rebellious Farmers, who constituted the greater part of Homeworld's population. The bodyguards around Url discreetly prevented him from closing the gap, until Url waved them away.

'We need to discuss this threat, Url,' began Sur. 'On the brink of a whole new world to exploit and enslave, this threat cannot be allowed to divert us. Cannot. Will not!'

Pinioned between two bio-vores, the Doctor felt that his life could be measured in minutes, at best.

That means the chaps at Mersa Martuba might very well be tempted to use the "Porcupine Bomb", he commiserated with himself. Which was not a good thing. He'd built the wretched thing as a last resort, assuming that he'd be there to decide what constituted a last resort. He wanted to avoid blind bashing with sheer firepower.

Well, if the TARDIS wasn't here on Earth, it must be at the other end of the trans-mat, on Wastelandworld. Probably with that pompous parasitical windbag Sur rubbing his hands – or analogues thereof – over acquiring it. Damn, he came so close to getting back to it!

One of the aliens dragged him around, to throw him at the feet of another bio-vore, one hung about with various equipments and a helmet, too.

'Small alien,' said the well-accoutured bio-vore. 'You are associated with previous incursions here at the Infiltration Complex. Also sabotage on Homeworld - '

'That's not the half of it,' interrupted the Doctor. 'I own a large blue box your aristocracy have stolen from me.'

For a second utter silence reigned across the roasting sands and baking alien architecture.

'You!' said a bio-vore, exhibiting what must be amusement, since they didn't bend backwards for the non-verbal surprise gesture.

'Completely true. I don't suppose many of you are familiar with dimensionally-transcendental, polymorphic, temporal-mechanic architecture?'

The prospect of immediate death receded slightly as the bio-vore strung about with bits and pieces stood back to consult with others.

'You are clearly not one of the local species,' declared the bio-vore in a tone that smacked of saving-face. 'Hence you will be sent to Homeworld instead of being Eviscerated.'

'Ah yes. Half a loaf and all that,' murmured the Time Lord ironically. A cuff from the bio-vore sent him reeling across the gritty gravel floor of the desert basin.

'Less insolence, alien lifeform!' boomed the bio-vore. 'Get on the trans-mat platform.'

Standing on the massive disc that constituted what Professor Templeman had dubbed "The Dias", the Doctor chewed his lip and wondered if his subconscious had conspired to get him up here.

His splendid isolation lasted only a few seconds, since four bio-vores dragged a Sahariana up the approach ramp and onto the platform, to stand next to him.

'Hello there!' he greeted them, beaming in entirely inappropriate fashion. 'I'm called The Doctor.'

The four aliens looked intently at him. They were without the equipment that nearly every other bio-vore wore.

'Let me guess – you are the Homeworld peasantry?'

Eight eyes looked at him with interested incomprehension.

'The opposite of the Warriors? You harvest and produce the algae cultures that sustain life on Wastelandworld?'

With no warning – he'd been concentrating elsewhere when the alert sirens wailed – he was suddenly on a platform elsewhere with semi-circle of armed bio-vores watching him. Him and the party that arrived with him. Twin cooler suns and warmer winds played across his body.

'You are the alien escapee,' hissed one bio-vore, his mouth covered by a great spade-like hand.

'That's me. I broke free. So may you,' agreed the Doctor. 'Metaphorically.'

A reception party of Warrior bio-vores strode across the platform to take possession of the Sahariana. They shoved the other bio-vores aside without any pause for thought, leading to an uncomfortable argument between the two parties. The Warriors far outnumbered the four menial workers, who nevertheless stood up to the bullies.

Looking on, the Doctor realised he had arrived at a critical point in the revolution taking place in bio-vore culture.

Matters reached a crux when one of the Warriors, indulging in what they had done to Farmers innumerable since recorded history, tried to Eviscerate one Farmer. The leaching proboscis lanced out –

- to be severed at mid-point by the Doctor with a great razor-edged shard of glass discovered in his pocket (a remnant from the shattered glass towing cable), swept down in a slashing movement straight from a karate text book.

The mutiliated Warrior stumbled backwards, screaming thinly and clutching at the stump waving bloodily on his face. With an unexpected reprieve, all four Farmer bio-vores suddenly raced from the platform, bowling over several Warriors. Glass darts flew, orders were shouted and two Farmer corpses were dragged back to the trans-mat complex minutes later.

'You! You again!' barked an unpleasantly familiar voice from the platform's control console.

'Ah, hello, Sur, old chap. How's tricks?' asked the Doctor in an entirely assumed nonchalant voice. He had remained perfectly still whilst the pursuit went on.

'Rather a _lively_ alien, for one supposedly dead,' added another caped bio-vore standing next to Sur. 'Perhaps they have the secrets of resurrection, eh?'

'Kill him! Kill him now!' shouted Sur, with ferocious emphasis. His bio-vore compatriot moved backward a step, keeping eyes on Sur whilst still speaking.

'Alive and well and spreading revolt, sufficient for the punishment,' said the bio-vore, suddenly shooting out it's proboscis. Lord Excellency Sur, having failed his peers, was deemed liable to pay the ultimate sacrifice.

Sur felt the paralysing impact of Url's proboscis, hitting between his scapulae, the traditional killing point. The energy drain was instant and enormous, preventing any last speeches or wishes or thoughts apart from that last one –

what will happen to the big blue box?

For all that Sur was a loathsome political parasite, the Doctor felt a touch of horror when he saw the alien reduced to a lifeless bundle of shrivelled fibres, which drifted away in the winds. Another victim of the foul civilisation that flourished here on Wastelandworld!

Lord Excellency Url wasted very little time over the dessicated remains of Sur. The Lord had been a buffoon, managing to lose both an alien captive and a heretic and allowing discontent amongst the slave population of his littoral. Farmers killing Warriors! The very idea! As if something like that could ever occur in a littoral not rigorously monitored and maintained, like his own.

Now, there remained the peculiar matter of that alien, the alien supposedly in control of the big blue box that Sur took so much trouble to acquire. What did the technical Warriors babble? "Dimensionally transcendental". An artefact uncountable millenia beyond the technologies of either Homeworld or Target World Seventeen. So, the alien must be likewise.

'Fetch me the alien!'

Faced with a alien similar in comportment and appearance, to Sur, the Doctor didn't mince words.

'Your time is coming to an end! You and your artificially-created slave culture, with it's legacy of waste and blame-avoidance.'

Lord Excellency Url sneered in best bio-vore style, which merely seemed like a sneeze to the Doctor.

'Threaten away, alien. You will only live as long as we need you to explain the secrets of your puzzle-box.'

'Ha!' sneered the Doctor, a grimace that merely seemed like a palsied hiccough to Url. 'Ha!' Witty or wise response failed him, and he repeated the sneer whilst thinking. 'Ha! Ha! and – er – ha, again.'

Url made a gesture, indicating that the small alien ought to be removed to a place of confinement. Inspired by this sentence, the Doctor suddenly joined a mass of interconnected dots.

'And – and I know why you and Sur wanted Sorbusa executed as a heretic. Sorbusa and his comrades. Nothing to do with heresy!'

Url snorted in amused contempt, picking up his own woven cape.

'It's because they knew you from five thousand years ago, isn't it?'

Lord Excellency Url's talons scrabbled nervously on the cape, sliding uselessly across the woven strands of glass.

'You and Sur and the other aristocrats were those responsible for destroying this world's entire ecosphere all those thousands of years ago, weren't you? But you decided to avoid the blame, and instead live off the life energy of your fellow creatures. Didn't you!'

Url felt a great weakness hit him, centering on his stomach and knees. How, how, how in the howling hell of the devil's winds could this alien know such things!

'Oh yes,' continued the Doctor, feeling all the pieces fall into place like a computer-controlled jigsaw. 'Avoid trying to solve the problems, avoid coming up with solutions, try and export the failure to other worlds with your Infiltration Complexes. Make sure your own failure doesn't get analysed or discussed or even mentioned. Ensure that you and yours survive by creating a culture of slaves, slaves bred to be exploited and killed.'

Url couldn't speak, his throat choked with emotion, hatred and bile and fear. Instead he stretched out an arm, pointing, clenching and unclenching the talons.

'Kill me if you like,' continued the Doctor. 'But you have sown the seeds of your own destruction.'

'SILENCE!' shrieked Url, hurting his vocal cords with the violence of his shout. 'Guards! Guards, take this alien to the Place of Execution!'

Perhaps half the Warrior detachment on duty moved to detain the transgressing alien. To Url's creeping apprehension, fully half the detachment did not move at all. In fact, they seemed to be talking to each other. Discretion ruled that he also avoid being seen by the detachment, if they were so lary about obeying him.

How had that alien known the truth about events so far in the past! mused Url, sliding away from the trans-mat platform carefully. He _had_ been part of the authority who failed to prevent ecological collapse, as had Sur. The policy decision taken then had been to maintain a supervisory watch over bio-vore society, to keep their civilisation going until other resources could be discovered. The detachments sent off to other worlds were deemed heretical because they didn't – couldn't - understand the rationale behind the new culture grown up in their absence.

With an uncharacteristic twinge of conscience, Url wondered briefly if he and the other scientists-become-aristocrats had gotten it wrong.

Regardless, he intended to see that small alien Thedoctor strung up at the execution plaza, ready to divulge the secrets of Sur's big blue box.

'Faster! Faster! Don't you know you're on a tight schedule!' called the Doctor to his captors, who dragged him over the dead grey sands of Homeworld to the Place of Execution.

One of them hit their captive across the back of the head, leaving the Doctor wincing and with a big bruise to contemplate.

The Place of Execution was grim, grey and unpopulated. A big shallow granite bowl, with a semi-circle of terraces rising up around it for any audiences who might care to watch. A circle of glossy black glass poles stood erect in the middle of the granite basin, with tell-tale piles of organic debris strewn around their bases.

'No last request granted?' asked the Doctor as he was secured to a pole with what looked like liquorice bootlaces.

'No,' grunted the bio-vore doing the tying. 'Except to say that if you struggle, the restraints will cut off your limbs.'

'Oh, I see. Ultra-thin silicon dioxide filament? Perfect cutting tool. Especially for organic surgical purposes, don't' you agree?'

The detachment retired to the first tier of benches, to sit in ghastly judgement of his demise, judged the Doctor. More bio-vores joined them, with a late arrival striding across the granite basin to the Doctor; the same bio-vore who had shouted so loudly back at the trans-mat.

'Is this the best you could do? Really, I'm almost insulted,' joked the captive Time Lord. 'I mean, an important prisoner like myself, with the -'

'Silence!' shouted Url, glancing at his guard detachment with worry. He couldn't be sure that they were all on his side any more, not with how things were going, not with humble, servile Farmers daring to kill. 'I have come to pronounce a sentence of death!'


	13. Chapter 13

Twenty Five: Almost the End 

The Place of Execution was used only occasionally, for when one of the aristocrats or a senior Warrior wanted to make an example of a minion. Then, the unfortunate would be pinioned against a ceremonial pillar, a charge or charges laid out against them verbally, and an executioner would Eviscerate them.

Url felt a profound hatred for the alien, a hatred that he'd not felt for anything in the past that he could recall. Things were breaking down here on Homeworld, Farmers daring to lift their hands against their betters, Warriors discussing orders instead of following them blindly. Never mind that a new world beckoned, ripe and fat and perfect for exploitation, for what use would that be if Homeworld lay in ruins?

He intended to Eviscerate the malicious little alien himself, never mind that the big blue box would remain a mystery. Those idle scientific staff back at his keep could earn their bottled algae breaking into it!

Back to the sentence. Url stood at the front of the amphitheatre, facing the prisoner, who cocked his head to one side and gave a grimace of threat. Url began his diatribe.

'Being that you are guilty of sabotage, assault, deceit, insurrection, murder, theft, property damage to the value of - '

'Don't I get a chance to put my side?' interrupted the alien, making that threat gesture again. 'The defence, putting it's case to the judge and jury.'

Url merely scowled in annoyance. Mock, alien, mock. You will be dead within two minutes. Within three there will be nothing to show you ever existed.

'You are being tried. When sentence is passed, I will carry it out.'

The small alien made a noise unpleasantly similar to laughter.

'Judge, jury and executioner all in one? Well, I suppose it cuts the wage bill a little, eh?'

The aristocrat seethed with indignation. Such effrontery! Why, the last victim to suffer formal execution, an Overseer, had stood in stupified silence until Eviscerated.

'Property damage, unauthorised absenting from a cell, wilful damage to the fabric of - '

Gradually, Url became aware of a scraping, grinding screeching racket pitched at appalling volume behind him, rapidly surpassed in volume by the shouts of alarm and fear from the now-scattering audience.

He almost turned, before noticing that the small alien was sliding around the sacrificial pillar, presenting his back to his potential executioner. Was this a bluff, a dare, another tactic of insolence?

The thundering, smashing noise rushed at him. Warned by a shout, Url turned to see what had made such a vast noise and panic.

An Element Sieve! Rocketing down the terraced slope at increasing speed, striking sparks from the granite, smashing the stones once it passed them. A group of bio-vores lurked at the very top of the terraces, surely the ones who had propelled the twenty-ton device over the lip of the amphitheatre.

Horror-struck, and paralysed with fear, Url was smashed under the squealing metal of the massive object as it cannoned along the floor of the punishment basin, ploughing straight at the pole restraining the Doctor.

Keeping watch on the sentry platform, Doretti whistled loudly to the sandbag emplacement, where Davey snored whilst Tam kept a lookout.

'Look lively,' said Tam, elbowing his companion awake. Davey spluttered into wakefulness, muttering blearily.

'What's up?'

Tam nodded in the direction of Doretti, who pointed across the desert.

'He hasn't cranked the siren, so it ain't the nose-goblins.'

Davey brightened temporarily, hoping it might be a relief column sent down from Tobruk or Benghazi, tanks and artillery preferably. He scanned the distant horizon, unable to see far or clearly in the rippling haze that danced over the gravel and rock.

No tell-tale column of dust. Every vehicle travelling raised dust, except during or straight after rain, so where was the relief column?

In fact almost a minute went by before he saw what Doretti had seen. Of course, the Italian had the advantage of height and binoculars.

A bobbing, weaving black blob, that slowly resolved into a running animal. A camel. Riderless, a saddle dangling in dissaray from the hump.

'What the ruddy hell is a camel doing on it's own?' commented Tam.

' "Doing"? It looks like it's doing a flat race,' replied Davey. 'I reckon it's running from summat.'

Another black blob came after the first camel, resolving into another camel, this time with clutter on it's back.

The first animal came racing into the depot, onto the main track and carried on through, not slowing down. Davey, with a vague idea of stopping the creature, let it pass without trying to catch it.

'That was not a happy camel,' he told Tam in an aside.

Doretti cranked the siren once, bringing everyone to the eastern edge of the depot. Sarah, dozy and with a headache, climbed up the vantage point to see what approached. The soldier passed her his binoculars and indicated the second camel.

Sarah had only heard the footfalls of the first animal a minute before, a frantic rhythm that disturbed her sleep under an awning in one of the cooler mud huts. This second creature only managed a limping gait, one leg either injured or rendered senseless.

Because, crawling like a vile bloated beetle, another of the bio-vore's tanks came on in pursuit. Sarah noticed that this one had two barrels in the turret, one the familiar big-bored stun gun, the other a narrower weapon. Too fast to register properly, a series of missiles came from the narrower barrel, throwing up a line of spurts in the sand next to the racing camel. The creature swerved away, only for another sudden spray of sand to fly up and send it back on the original course.

Playing! They're toying with it! seethed Sarah to herself. Her anger increased when she realised the bundled cloth on the animal concealed at least one person. Doretti realised much the same and muttered imprecations.

Roger had been watching from behind Davey and Tam's emplacement. He felt pity for the suffering Arabs, but all the same hoped they wouldn't draw the bio-vores any nearer.

'Fat chance!' he grumbled.

Tam and Davey both looked at him. Dominione, standing in concealment behind a mud hut, shrugged in resignation. They were going to be discovered whether they opened fire or not.

The camel loped awkwardly straight for the depot, leading on the black tank. Roger crossed the roadway in a crouch, getting under the camo netting that concealed the A13 and climbed in by the turret hatch. The interior felt stifling after being outside, made even worse by the layers of camouflage netting that seemed to make the air staler than ever. Sweat stood out on his skin, not entirely the product of temperature.

Roger slid a two-pounder shell into the breech and closed it. Oil and grease helped to make the loading smoother. He squinted into the aiming telescope, seeing nothing but gravel and sand.

Okay, elevate. The elevating drum turned stiffly, as he brought the gun up to register at a range of three hundred yards. It wasn't possible to turn the turret; he had to wait until a target crossed his line of vision.

With a rapidity that displayed his nervousness, the officer stood up and looked out of the open turret hatch. The injured camel cantered closer, the black tank, squat and baleful, crawled along behind.

Roger dropped back into the gunner's seat, squinting into the rubber eyepiece, sweat and grit rubbing at his eyelid.

There! A fleeting glimpse of an irregular, rounded, bobbing object. Then a dark, glossy shape appeared in the sights. He pulled the trigger, ears suffering from the greatly-amplified bang that rang in the turret. Flicking the breech lever, the hot brass base of the two pounder shell rattled onto the floor at his feet. Roger slid another shell home, closed the breech, checked that there was still a target there – and there was – and fired again.

Tam and Davey witnessed the camel come into the depot, catching one glimpse of a terrified female face cradling a child under the concealing blue cloth, before the creature trotted off.

Their attention returned to the approaching bio-vore vehicle. The A13's gun fired, muzzle blast causing the camouflage netting to bulge outwards like a balloon. A glowing tracer in the shell's base drifted with what seemed astonishing slowness, until it hit the vehicle low down in the middle.

Unlike previous black tanks, this one did not blow apart. The shell hit, and the vehicle jerked to a stop, but it wasn't destroyed. The big flat turret began to turn, until a second shell hit the blind cockpit, smashing it open.

Bio-vores began to jump purposefully from the rear doors of the tank, wielding weapons. Sarah counted at least twenty – they moved and ducked for cover too much for her counting to be accurate. Several carried large pieces of equipment which they began to set up behind their immobilised transport.

'Take that, you barstards!' shouted Davey, beginning to fire his Vickers machine-gun. He fired without stopping, shifting the fall of bullets by watching the tracers or spurts of sand thrown up where the bullets landed. The bio-vores avoided grouping or offering easy targets, having learnt or recalled skirmish skills not needed for centuries. They still began to suffer injury under the relentless fire.

Running out of ammunition as the belt finished, Davey began to open another box. Tam began to fire his gun, short bursts aimed at a particular target, and he kept firing until he hit the target. Bio-vores made bigger targets than humans, but they were stronger, too. Each needed several bullets to kill them, nor was that all.

'They've got armour on,' realised Tam, seeing another bio-vore get up, only injured from what ought to have been a killing series of hits.

'Good! Because this belt is armour-piercing!' snarled Davey, in the grip of a furious temper.

A single loud popping sound erupted from behind the bio-vore tank, like a giant hiccough. Davey recognised it as a mortar and ducked flat, or as flat as he could. Another loud popping sound struck his ears, and he felt a stinging pain in his left bicep, and another behind his left ear. What sounded like bees went whizzing into the ground, and the sandbags, accompanied by pinging and rattling.

'We're being shelled,' he called to Tam, who didn't reply. The pain in his bicep made him look to see the damage: a long, slender splinter of glass fully four inches long projected from the muscle, blood staining the worn khaki around the wound. Almost afraid to look, Davey realised the big shrapnel spike penetrated to the other side, poking out for an inch.

'Tam!' he hissed, feeling a wave of nausea. 'Tam – I'm hit!'

The A13 fired again, then again, and again. The shells all hit the rear of the black tank, knocking off great chunks and physically shifting the vehicle. The movement was sufficient to expose part of the weapon concealed behind the tank.

Before the bio-vores could launch any more glass shrapnel bombs, the Sahariana driven by Torrevechio came bounding over the gravel from the south, shrugging off glass darts and stun rays from the dispersed bio-vore skirmishers, the A13's dismounted engine covers making excellent protection.

At a hundred yards distant from the aliens, Torrevechio fired up the flamethrower and drove straight at them, drenching the unfortunate victims in blazing fuel and killing them almost instantly. Next he swerved to the left and poured liquid flame over a few of the pinned-down bio-vores.

Faced with a weapon so terrifying, the surviving bio-vores broke and ran, only half a dozen of them getting away: Doretti saw to that, picking off runners with a Bren gun. He felt a savage delight in bowling the stampeding monsters over with a brace of bullets, until Sarah stopped him with a restraining hand.

'Enough,' she said. 'No killing for the sake of it. We need to defend ourselves, not to slaughter.'

Doretti's face, when they found the injured Davey, looked coolly and appraisingly at Sarah.

Tam was dying, hit in the back and the head by the big glass splinters. He hadn't been able to duck as fast as the private, who looked utterly distraught.

'I'm sorry, sir,' mumbled Tam, blind. 'And miss – I'll not get to know how this ends.'

'You daft plonker!' croaked Sarah, her throat constricting to the diameter of a drinking straw. 'You win!'

She didn't know if Tam ever heard her, but she hoped so, she hoped so. When she could speak again, Roger was tending to Davey. The officer broke off the longer end of the glass splinter and pulled the remnant out from the other side, in a gout of blood. Sarah stood by and helped with a bandage, then cleaned out a ragged gash in the back of Davey's head, laid open by more shrapnel. The private slurred his words and alternated between grogginess and aggression, symptoms of concussion. Once he was bandaged Roger escorted him over to the mud hut Sarah had been sleeping in, forcing him to drink water and sit in the sultry heat of the primitive structure.

'Needs proper medical care,' commented the officer, rooting in a tin medical box. 'Here we go, sulfa powder. Morphine, morphine, morphine – got it.' He straightened up. 'Your chappie the Doctor couldn't help, could he?'

Sarah shrugged, her emotive response dulled by sorrow.

'I don't think he's that skilled at medicine. Science is more his thing.'

Dominione asked where Albert and the Professor were? He hadn't seen them for a long time. Were they casualties?

Nowhere near casualties, it transpired. Albert had been practicing taxiing in the Lysander beyond the supply depot's western perimeter, with the Professor looking on to indicate and rate his performance in terms of thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs horizontal.

'I think I've got the hang of it,' exclaimed an excited and dusty Albert, climbing down from the cockpit and pushing a pair of goggles atop his head. Sarah and Dominione looked on with less enthusiasm that the Professor, who scowled hugely at their lack of support.

'We're now down to eight people,' said Sarah. 'Corporal Mickleborough died five minutes ago.'

'Died! What happened?' asked Albert. The noise and dust created by the unevenly running aircraft engine meant he missed the whole battle on the eastern edge of the depot. 'I see. I see. Sorry I missed helping,' he said in a very muted voice after hearing the explanation.

'We need to all be together,' declared Dominione. 'For a briefing.'

Sarah translated and the two archaeologists swapped glances, only to agree.

Roger looked at his fellow survivors and soldiers. Dusty, pale-faced, salt-encrusted and unutterably weary. Not counting Davey, in even worse condition than the rest of them. Torrevechio had picked up soot and smoke from the flamthrower, leaving only his goggle-covered eyes clean in a filthy face.

How unfair was all this! The lieutenant silently snarled. Corporal Mickleborough, Captain Dobie, all the other dead garrison soldiers. They were members of the RASC, not men who did the fighting. They supplied the men who did the fighting. Fighting was down to other people, other folk who put their lives on the line, not the pen-pushing, crate-carrying men of the RASC.

'As I see it,' he began, 'We are not in a good position. There are only eight of us left alive, and only seven effectives. Whilst we repelled the last enemy attack, I don't think we can survive another.'

'You don't _know_ another attack will come,' stated Professor Templeman with considerable emphasis. 'You aren't gifted with a crystal ball.'

'No. I don't know. But I do have a very well-informed speculative sense.'

Roger pointed at the wreck of the knocked-out bio-vore vehicle.

'I've been over to look at that monstrous chariot. The other ones that got hit by armour-piercing shot flew apart in a cloud of fragments. That one remained intact, as you can see.'

Silence settled whilst the audience waited for an explanation.

'That particular vehicle, however, has been constructed with layers of metal mesh underneath the surface, interleaved in the glass. Our opponents learn quickly. At a guess, I would say that the recycled Sahariana's are now being used to armour these things.' Seeing a lack of comprehension, Roger carried on. 'They use metal to strengthen the glass that makes up their main construction material.'

'What are you implying?' asked the Professor.

'That they'll be back, and ready to attack us. That mortar weapon firing glass shrapnel – I think that's how they killed the Lysander pilot. I bet there are other weapons come through from their arsenals, too.'

Sarah remained silent. Her worry focussed on the Doctor, who had been gone far too long for comfort. He might very well have to creep around secretly, avoiding bio-vores, but he'd been gone far too long. Despite the heat, she shivered.

'Somebody walk over your grave?' asked Albert, with all the tact of a tank. Professor Templeman scowled at the graduate, who blushed after realising what he'd said.

'I want us to get ready to leave the depot, and move back to the wadi. Use the Bedford – oh, the clutch has gone. Stow food and water in the Bedford, then tow it with a Sahariana. We take one of the Vickers guns in the emplacement, for protection.'

'Abandon the depot?' said Dominione, not entirely in agreement once he understood what the other officer wanted.

'We barely held off that last attack. The bio-vores know where we are, now, and how many of us there are. We have only seven people, three of whom are civlians unfamiliar with firearms. The A13 can't be moved around.'

Sarah caught Albert looking sideways at Roger. The young graduate seemed about to speak, then changed his mind.

Albert had intended to point out that the defenders still had the giant-flamethrower, and over a hundred Amaretto spirit bombs, and – most tellingly – an aircraft.

Twenty Six: Pushed Over the Edge 

From his viewpoint, his hands strung together behind the pillar by cuttingly thin strands of glass wire, the Doctor saw an enormous metal oval appear at the edge of the execution basin, moving jerkily. In fact he was the only witness, since the audience of bio-vores were clustered along the lower tiers of the amphitheatre, all intently looking at him.

'Oh, get on with it, you pompous windbag!' he shouted at Url, who ignored the interruption and carried on with the sentence.

Fascinated, the Doctor recognised the metal oval as an Element Sieve, big as a house, being pushed over the rim of the artificial basin. The bio-vores who would normally be towing it were now pushing it. And it would come racing down right at him.

For a split-second the massive object teetered on the very lip of the semi-circular arena, before tipping forward and smashing downwards, accelerating.

Carefully, wanting to avoid getting his hands cut off, the Doctor shuffled around the pillar to face away from the oncoming metal juggernaut. He heard the shuffles and shrieks of bio-vores moving out of the way, and the last gasp of Url, too late and too slow to avoid being crushed to death, all under the muted thunder and grating of the Element Sieve, which struck his pillar like an earthquake.

The pillar broke at the base, falling backwards into the gaping scoop of the Element Sieve, where it stuck like a matchstick in a mouth. The Doctor desperately and frantically struggled to retain his balance, bracing his thighs and feet against the pillar, as the massive metal scoop skidded across the floor, sending out sparks in all directions. The pillar rolled left and right, the binding wire cruelly cutting into the Doctors wrists

With a tremendous hollow clang, the Element Sieve hit the far side of the amphitheatre, pitching the pillar forward again. The Doctor fell to the side of the stone column, hearing a series of brittle cracks, surmounted by a rapid series of high-pitched twanging sounds, reminiscent of a sped-up banjo.

Experimentally , he flexed his fingers. Still working! Tugging very gently, he found no resistance from the hitherto restricting glass bonds.

Gingerly, he stood up, seeing that his restraints of glass had impacted against the rim of the worn metal scoop, and shattered under the weight of the column hitting them at speed.

The heavily worn and pitted interior of the scoop smelt of hot metal, odd mineral tangs and dust. As the Doctor moved inside it, the scoop rocked slightly, making grating noises that echoed a little.

Stepping outside, keeping to the cover of the giant Sieve, the Doctor peered carefully round a curving shoulder of metal at the amphitheatre. Ranks of empty tiered seating, with a path of shattered stones and slabs leading down from the edge of the basin to his very feet. That crumpled purple smear on the granite flooring must be Lord Excellency Url …

Escaping from the amphitheatre was an anticlimax; there were no bio-vores present, and when the Time Lord reached level ground, no living thing in sight. Presumably his erstwhile captors considered him to be definitely dead, not worth bothering about in a search.

He never could be sure whether the bio-vores had propelled their indiscriminate missile at Url, to kill the aristocrat, or at The Doctor, to free him.

Whatever their intent, he faced a long hike back to the grey granite complex at the shoreline, where the TARDIS still stood.

'In such a case, one practices discretion, that part which bests valour,' he mused to the uncaring desert around him. He made a direct path to the distant sea, intending to hit the shore and then work south to the trans-mat complex.

Bio-vore society, undergoing convulsions, interrupted his progress. The Doctor managed to get to the dunes that overlooked the tired, shallow sea before meeting any more inhabitants of Wastelandworld, as he now dubbed it.

Suddenly, a group of bio-vores appeared in front of him, looming with silent menace, an ambush out of the sands. When he turned to retreat, another group stood behind him, looking equally threatening.

'Stay your hand!' called one of the aliens. 'This is the alien prophet. He is called "Thedoctor". Do not harm him.'

Feeling absurdly flattered, the Doctor found it hard to avoid preening a little. He bowed to the aliens, a gesture that impressed them enormously.

'Thank you! Thank you, and to whom am I indebted?'

'You can call me Imgelissa. You, Thedoctor, bear a charmed life. Not less than an hour ago, you were being led to the Place of Execution.'

Tapping the side of his nose, the Doctor grinned back.

'A few of your friends helped to set me free. Allow me to guess – you are the peasant population of this world, and you have finally begun to resist your lords and masters? Armed insurrection? Revolt?' This was far better than using a crude bomb to destroy their Earth-terminus trans-mat! No "mere blind bashing" indeed!

The bio-vore's appearance confirmed what he suspected: their assorted harvesting tools and equipment had been adapted to become lethal weapons, knives, pikes, scythes, hammers and other offensive hardware. A development straight out of Chinese peasant resistance. A few stunners or shard-throwers were also in evidence, probably booty from slain Warriors.

'Word has reached us that you accuse the aristocrats of being responsible for reducing Homeworld to this - ' and Imgelissa gestured at the wasted lands around about ' – whilst pretending that it is not their fault, that they are fated to rule Homeworld regardless of what they do.'

With a touch of steel in his tone, the Doctor informed the audience of what he extrapolated about the littoral aristocracy. How they had despoiled their own world, then sought to export that misery to other worlds, all to avoid having to face the consequences of their own actions.

'What is _your_ moral stance?' asked the Doctor of his audience, turning and looking at them, and realising with a well-concealed start that his audience had unobtrusively grown to number several hundreds. 'What is your attitude? How do you feel?'

With a strange, backward bow, Imgelissa addressed the Doctor.

'We the Farmers feel what we have long felt, that it is folly to extort life from life, criminal to destroy others that others may live. We can subsist on the energies of algae, without resort to the life-energies of our fellows, without sapping other worlds of their life. The Farmers can exist as a self-sufficient culture, if we ever get free of the cursed Warriors!'

The Doctor folded his arms and stared intently at Imgelissa.

'You may be getting just that, Farmer Imgelissa. You called me a prophet before.' Theatrically, the Doctor stopped to sweep his arms wide, indicating everyone now listening. 'No! Not a prophet. I merely predicted what would happen when you, the Farmers, finally stood up to your masters. All that has happened since is the result of your actions, not mine.'

Long murmurs of discussion went around the listening aliens, who looked impressed with this intellectual distinction.

The Doctor looked on with approval. Self-determination, very good!

The discussion died when a stranger came into view, a Warrior to judge by the amount of equipment dangling from it's utility belt.

The massed Farmers noticed the Warrior and didn't seem disposed to treat him leniently. Several dozen brandished their improvised weapons, and began to close on the solo bio-vore. The Warrior did not stop or slow down, but did make that strange backwards bow that the Doctor had seen elsewhere.

Oh! I see! he realised. A gesture of submission. That's why the listeners were so impressed when I bowed to them.

'Stay your hands! Let him speak!' boomed the Doctor in the best music hall baritone he could muster. This created sufficient confusion to allow the lone Warrior to speak. Firstly he crossed both hands over his proboscis, another gesture the Doctor realised was meant to be conciliatory.

'I will not fight for the Overseers, or the Seniors, nor the Detachment Leaders any longer,' intoned the Warrior. 'And most of all I will not fight for the aristocrats, the Lords and Excellencies.'

Most impressive! Breaking free from the class and culture classification of ages, analysed the Doctor.

'Why is that?' he asked, curious as ever.

The Warrior threw off his armour and web harness.

'I look around and see a dying world. We should be trying to revive it, not trying to destroy other worlds. Besides, Thedoctor prophet said the aristocrats helped despoil this world, an age ago.' This last sentence was said with a sly glance at the Doctor.

'Really, I'm not a prophet!' protested the latter, now feeling a little concerned at his reputation's rapid spread. He tried to fade into the background rather more, trying to listen to what the Farmers were planning.

Imgelissa, nominally the leader of the Farmers, gestured to his followers to gather round for a quick discussion.

The rebellion had spread up and down the coast with surprising speed, moving from scattered attacks on isolated Overseers and Warriors to large-scale assaults on the various building complexes. Lord Sur's castle had been attacked, occupied and plundered, the underground cells discovered and checked (all empty). The Warrior garrison fought briefly and fled, pursued by angry insults and thrown stones.

Part of the reason for the rapid spread of actual revolt, as opposed to covert discontent and mutterings, was the excessive demand for algae requirement, and the attempted Evisceration of dozens of Farmers to "encourage" their fellows.

Imgelissa also realised that the aristocrats and their aides had made a major blunder in sending so many Warriors to Target World Seventeen. The total came to nearly a thousand, a thousand Warriors who might have been able to prevent this rebellion and crush it, but who were off on the Target World.

In the near future he anticipated that the littoral aristocracy would arrive with detachments of Warriors, ready to kill and destroy to re-establish their regime. In the north, parties of Farmers were posted as lookouts, waiting to give a warning on seeing any approaching forces. The north wasn't a problem.

South was where they had a difficulty. South lay the trans-mat complex, guarded by surviving Warriors, Overseers and one or two misinformed Farmers. The Warriors were too numerous, well-armed and protected to be overwhelmed by a direct attack. That had been proven, bloodily, twice.

Not only that, recalled Imgelissa, with a nasty feeling of having missed a trick, the other lords along the littoral might send reinforcements to the loyalists holding the trans-mat _by_ trans-mat. As a mere Farmer he didn't know how many trans-mat stations still operated, those ones capable of sending matter across the continents, but it would be folly to assume none still functioned.

He stopped thinking and began speaking.

'We _must_ overcome the defenders at the trans-mat station. Only if we capture that do we become safe from loyalist reinforcements being sent in by other aristocrats to our north and south, or from other continents.'

'You'll be lucky!' replied a Farmer. 'We've already tried twice.'

'A hundred dead,' complained another.

Before Imgelissa could speak, Thedoctor interrupted, a strange wrinkling appearing on the skin above his eyes.

'How many injured?' asked the small alien. Although it came in the form of a question, Imgelissa felt Thedoctor knew the answer already. After all, he was a prophet.

The bio-vores looked amongst each other. Injured?

'Oh! I understand!' exclaimed a Farmer. 'Those temporarily alive. Maybe fifty were temporarily alive, until Eviscerated.'

Thedoctor didn't stop his questioning there.

'Very well, ignoring those who suffered injury in the recent attacks, what if one of you were to suffer an accident whilst harvesting algae? What if you contracted a disease?'

Once again, Imgelissa and the other bio-vores exchanged looks of surprise at the prophet's ignorance. It fell to Nurbonissa, young and daring, to reply.

'Evisceration, of course. What else is there!'

Thedoctor seemed to turn purple with suppressed rage, which burst forth in a long diatribe. Imgelissa listened, spellbound, as did the entire audience. They underwent a conversion, then, convinced that Thedoctor was not merely a prophet but a visionary.

'Medicine!' he roared, with a volume and vigour not utilised since appearing at the Trocadero in 1896. 'Surgery! I am living proof that the "temporarily living" can be brought back to full health. On many occasions in the past I have been injured, or rendered sick with an illness. Did my fellow s kill me? No! No, they used medicine, or surgery, or both to help me find my way back to full health.'

The Farmers looked at each other, wondering at this new concept of society. Medicine? Surgery?

'Keeping your fellow alive is all very well,' commented a Farmer. 'We don't have sufficient algae or other bio-morphic resources to sustain our tempor – the "injured".'

Normally a quiet round of whispered assent would have greeted this statement. Today, dead silence held sway until Thedoctor spoke again.

'Not yet. Not yet, you don't. I can help to provide you with plants adapted for desert terrain, and embryonic fauna to populate your environment. Well, I can if I can get my TARDIS back.'

Once again a whisper of discussion went around the listeners.

'Allow me to explain,' continued Thedoctor. 'I managed to escape from the cells underneath Lord Sur's castle, by smashing the cell walls with a prosthesis. An artificial bone, created and utilised by your ancestors five thousand years ago. Your long-dead relatives knew how to mend and maintain the bio-vore body, and so can you. Medicine! The usage of pharmeceuticals to balance the body's internal chemistry. Surgery! Physical manipulation of the body proper, the better to repair it.'

Imgelissa and his compatriots looked at each other in slow, treacly understanding: a bio-vore injured was not mere Evisceration fodder. To fall ill was not – _ought_ not – to be an automatic sentence of death. A Farmer who was not well might very well get better and perform mighty deeds.

Still wearing a shadow of the frown created by what he heard from the Farmers, the Doctor looked over his now enormous audience. From hundreds, the listeners had grown to thousands, trickling in during his presentation.

A revolution in progress! he enthused, before taking stock more empirically. In progress here, perhaps, at this part of the littoral. At this part of the littoral, in progress until swamped by the response of other, less-threatened aristocrats.

He looked out over the bio-vores, who looked back with a hungry intensity that bespoke a desire to hear The Answer.

'I'm afraid that my colleague here spoke the truth. To be safe from an attack by outside agencies, we need to prosecute a vigorous attack against those very same agencies.'

In behaviour completely different from that displayed during Imgelissa's tenure, the waiting bio-vore audience accorded the Doctor a serried wave of applause.

For a moment that seemed to last whole minutes, the Doctor paused to think. Finally, having ensured that the maximum number of people would pay attention now (and in the future), he continued.

'We do indeed need to capture the trans-mat platform. If we have that platform then the old order is ham-strung. Already the aristocrats of the coast are panicking about the Farmers taking matters into their own hands, trying to reverse history, undercutting progress.'

That was a guess, but a well-informed guess nevertheless. With any advanced communication system the leaders would be finding out what was happening across their world, before the man at the bottom level found out himself.

What the Doctor couldn't ignore or bypass was the fact that the revolt amongst Warriors and Farmers was taking place in a single city-state. There were dozens of other such polities across this world, which might or might not choose to join in the revolt.

With startling clarity a phrase from Sorbusa came back to the Doctor. Target World Fourteen – and that gave him an idea.

'What we need is a Torjan Horse. None of you are familiar with that concept?'

Imgelissa crossed both hands over his proboscis.

'We are Farmers, Thedoctor, not Warriors. Conflict is novel to us.'

'Good! Let's hope it stays that way.'

From the sentry post of Lord Url's keep, the warning went out that an Element Sieve was approaching, being dragged by two dozen Farmers, escorted by Warriors.

The garrison at Lord Url's keep had been reduced due to the escort sent to obvserve matters at the large-scale transmat. They had been warned by the survivors of the escort that Lord Url was missing, had not been seen for hours, and that Farmers – yes, Farmers! – were attacking at the trans-mat platform.

The huge metal artefact was dragged into the inner keep, scraping over the granite flooring – which is when the escorting Warriors turned on the keep's garrison, as did the towing Farmers.

Not only that, the service and retrieval hatches on the Element Sieve fell open, and more Farmers stormed out. Within half an hour the keep had fallen to the fifty attackers.

The Doctor was allowed out of the Element Sieve when the fighting finished, to be led deeper within the castle and to Lord Url's own private trans-mat.

'Can you operate this equipment?' asked one of the escorting Farmers.

Taking in the big panels, with their coding, lettering, symbols and schematics, the Doctor nodded confidently.

'Oh yes! The trick lies not in knowing how to operate this equipment, it's in finding out how to remotely operate other trans-mats.'

He had told several of the elected leaders amongst the rebels what he intended to do, which had impressed and alarmed them. Enough to insist he took an escort with him.

As luck would have it, one of the castle's unarmed staff survived: an Administrator. He was brought before the Doctor, who looked keenly at the frightened alien.

'I want to know which large-scale trans-mat was used to send an Infiltration Complex to Target World Fourteen. I want to know if it can be re-activated. Can it?'


	14. Chapter 14

Twenty Seven: Apres moi, la deluge 

Whilst packing tinned food and bottles of water, Roger took good care to keep an eye on the Doctor's "porcupine bomb". He had wrapped it in a tarpaulin, making it look like a badly-made football.

Electrically-detonated, the mad Doctor Smith had said. There was a long wire soldered to one of the blank cartridges, ending with two crocodile clips. That must get attached to a battery.

Greatly daring, Roger took ten minutes to open up the Bedford's bonnet, wrenching out various bits of radiator and piping until he'd cleared a space big enough for the tarpaulin-wrapped bomb to sit. He then attached the crocodile clips to the starter motor, which got broken open with the butt-end of a rifle.

The ignition keys went into his pocket. On no account was he going to risk an accidental explosion!

Towed by two Sahariana's, the Chevrolet was third vehicle in the little convoy that made it's way westwards, towards the wadi hideaway. A third Sahariana remained in the depot, where Torrevechio stood on watch. If any aliens approached, he would drive back to the wadi to warn them. No siren – Roger and Dominione agreed that silence, and apparent abandonment of the depot would be better than making a big fuss.

Sarah remained anxious about the Doctor's continued disappearance. Misfortune must have befallen him, or he would have been back here long ago with the TARDIS.

Could the bio-vores have taken it back to their homeworld? If so, how could the Doctor ever get it back again?

'Don't fret, Miss,' encouraged Doretti, driving the Sahariana. 'Doctor Smith is so daft he's clever.'

'That's a back-handed compliment if I ever heard one!' replied Sarah

Another disappearance was discovered when the three vehicles reached the wadi bed and stopped.

'Where's Albert?' asked the Professor. 'I thought he was in the back of the Bedford.'

'Where's Private Menzies?' asked Roger. I thought he was in the back of the Bedford.'

'Where's the liquer-bombs?' asked Sarah, looking in the back of the truck. Dozens of bottles were missing.

Oh no, what mischief are those two idiots planning! thought Roger, not daring to speak the words aloud. On cue, he heard a ragged and uneven engine fire up and begin to run, the sound brought to them on the desert wind. The engine chugged away, misfiring, until it revved enormously and began to fade audibly.

'They have taken the plane. They plan to drop spirit-bombs – Molotov cocktails – on the monsters,' said Dominione, flatly. He didn't want to look at Lieutenant Llewellyn, whose face went puce with anger.

'What can they hope to do!' he raged. 'An unarmed aircraft with some bottles of spirit. Damn their eyes, they're going to call those monsters down around our ears!'

Nor was that all their misfortune. Torrevechio came bowling over the desert in the reserve Sahariana, waving and gesturing.

The bio-vores were on the move. En masse. Once he got to the wadi rendezvous, he had even more unpleasant details.

'There must be nearly a hundred of them, the big black vehicles. Not only that, they have a rolling barrier of sand in front of them, like a miniature sandstorm, ten metres tall. At ground level you can't see a thing.'

Sarah guessed the truth of this.

'That's what they're good at, manipulating sand, isn't it? That must be their equivalent of a smokescreen.'

'What I'd like you to make for me are triangular glass sheets, capable of sustaining a weight suspended beneath. I want poles, lightweight poles, in half-metre and two metre lengths.'

The attentive audience in Lord Url's castle listened carefully, whispered amongst each other and made chopping gestures of agreement. Yes, it could be done.

'Let's see – fifty glass triangles, fifty long poles, one hundred short poles.' He'd calculated that the triangles must be fifty square metres in area, judging by the average mass of a bio-vore.

Bio-vores set-to amongst the machines of the textile hall and in the artificer's workshop, diligently creating the strange items requested by Thedoctor.

Nurbonissa, now in charge at the castle, dared to ask questions.

'Thedoctor, what are these objects for? Are they shields?'

Grinning, the Time Lord shook his head.

'Not at all. No, Nurbonissa, these articles, if properly assembled, will give you a dimensional advantage over your enemies at the trans-mat platform.'

The young alien made the backwards-rearing gesture of surprise.

The Doctor tapped his nose.

'Patience! Just wait and see. Firstly, we need night-time.'

Night-time was essential for two reasons. Firstly, it would render the defenders much more vulnerable. Secondly, it created a thermal environment essential for his scratch plan to succeed.

Several hours later, dusk was falling as the Doctor demonstrated how to use the assembled triangles. Practice for the bio-vores took place, until they were at least familiar with their personally issued equipment. A few accidents reduced the number of attackers to forty seven.

Nurbonissa still foresaw problems.

'The defenders have been re-inforced by units from other polities across the northern hemisphere. They outnumber the attackers you plan to send. They have many weapons. How can only fifty rebels triumph?'

'Courage, _mon brave_,' replied the Doctor. 'This is only part two of the plan. We still have to execute part one. Chin up!'

The cheerfullness wasn't faked. This time, the Doctor felt he had the upper hand, and all the assembled aristocrats of the entire northern hemisphere couldn't stop him. The only cloud on his horizon was the knowledge that Sarah and the human survivors at Mersa Martubah might be struggling without him.

'Tut!' he scornfully told himself. 'I'm sure they can manage without my help for a few hours. Nothing to worry about!'

Albert felt enormous relief, followed by jubilation, that he could get the Lysander airborne.

Taxiing, they told you at the University Flying School, was tricky. It certainly was in the desert, with huge clouds of dust to fly through when taking off! Made even less certain by the misfiring engine, which ran not quite smoothly enough and made him worried.

Glancing behind, the sight of a grimy, bandaged Private Menzies, sitting on a pile of Amaretto bottles, didn't exactly fill him with confidence. Davey was swigging from an opened bottle, which made Albert indignant.

'Hoy! Don't drink the ammunition!' he called, attention back on the ground below again.

'Look yonder!' called Davey, pointing south-east out of the rear compartment and spitting out liquer. 'The damn nose-goblins are attacking the depot!'

Keeping out of dust billows, Albert saw the frightening sight of dozens upon dozens of black, glassy vehicles moving towards Mersa Martubah. The things were arrayed in lines, reminiscent of a pefect armoured formation on manouevres. Slowly they moved forward, dust streaming out behind them.

'Get your Ronson ready!' he shouted.

Davey slid one of the windows open, allowing a powerful stream of cold air into the rear compartment, churning up dust and glass fragments. He fired the tarred fabric strip on bottle after bottle, throwing them out of the opened window, hearing the far distant _chink_ of the bottles smashing below.

Albert kept low, very low, flying only just above the crawling black monsters. That way they didn't have the faintest chance of bringing a weapon to bear. He looked back as the Lysander rocketed south-east, seeing the symmetrical lines broken, with bright blue fires burning atop some of the vehicles.

'Take that for Tam, ye swine!' yelled Davey, shaking a fist. Albert was more bothered about the falling oil-pressure guage. Was that a trail of faint blue smoke behind them? Damn it, he was mounting this desperate raid because he'd entirely failed to even notice, let alone take part in, the battle that killed Corporal Mickleborough. Going out with engine failure was a silly way to end it!

'Get ready, Davey, the dig's coming up!' he shouted. The long-abandoned line of tents blurred past beneath them, then the aircraft was over the sand basin. Davey once more threw lit bottles outwards as the Lysander cruised at fifty miles per hour over the sinister glossy black buildings of the excavation. Albert banked over the far wall of the basin, coming back again and noting with glee the blind panic suffered by the aliens below.

No experience of aircraft! he enthused. Especially not an aircraft that flew over and dropped flaming bombs on them.

They might have gotten away successfully, if the Lysander had not flown over the giant circular platform of the Dias, where various crates and scrolls were deposited. One second their right-hand wing was over the platform, the next it was gone, nine feet missing.

Instantly Albert lost control, the aircraft spiralling downwards around it's axis with incredible speed, smashing into the HQ building. It blew up, the explosion made even bigger by the collection of spirit bottles carried, a bright blue sheet of flame erupting outwards between the building columns.

Droning eastwards, at five thousand feet, the pinprick flashes of Albert and Davey's first attack drew the attention of a pilot aboard a Blenheim Mk V, christened "Guynemer". His aircraft was one of a flight of three, and the only one to still have bombs aboard. Their target, an Italian freighter, had been hit and sunk by the first and second aircraft in the flight.

The aircraft were from the FAFL, frankly-obsolete but generously given by the British to their prickly French allies, who took great relish in attacking anything Italian. The Germans would get their turn, was the common consensus of the squadron, but for now – kill Italians!

'Sst! Regardez,' said the pilot to his co-pilot, indicating the flashes below. By this time the Lysander had flown away, but the pilot knew what he'd seen. The co-pilot looked, aware that their Lysander reconaissance plane went missing in this area.

A mass of black dots, enemy MT doubtlesss, crawled over the gravel and grit of the land below, preceded by a remarkably regular sandstorm, one that roiled and rolled yet always remained just ahead of the advancing black beetles.

'L'Italiens,' said the co-pilot, making a gesture as if spitting. 'Putains.'

The pilot looked over his shoulder, as if he could see back to the bomb bay, then back at his colleague.

'Oui!' said the co-pilot, grinning with a nasty smile. 'Ecoutez moi, mon amis Italien,' he spoke into an imaginary loudspeaker. 'Attendez! Attendez! Votre mort commencez en vingt seconds. Merci.'

The bomb run commenced at three thousand feet, depositing two-hundred pound bombs along the middle row of vehicles. Under such a smashing assault, a whole row was pulverised into fragments. Other vehicles were crippled by bomb fragments, and the precise array of black tanks became a chaotic flurry.

Nor was that all. The Mk V Blenheim had been fitted with four machine guns in the nose, for ground attack. All three aircraft made passes at low level, firing twelve thousand rounds of ammunition. Any bio-vore out of cover was killed. Bio-vores under cover, in their vehicles, were killed when bullets found entry and ricocheted around interiors.

The twenty surviving black tanks rearranged their ranks, retreating to the depths of the desert towards Makin Al-Jinni.

'Chars Italien?' mused the pilot of Guynemer. Those crawling black things didn't look Italian. Still, if a Lysander had attacked them, they must be the enemy.

'L'allemagne, peutetre?' shrugged the co-pilot. He grinned his nasty grin. 'Peutetre, mon capitain, chars Anglais.'

The pilot wagged a cautionary finger.

The three aircraft of the FAFL went back to the squadron at Sidi Rezegh, unaware of the role they played in the preservation of the human race.

In the wadi, the human survivors saw the flight of bombers alter course, swooping down and bombing the oncoming bio-vores, then returning to spray the wreckage and survivors with a hurricane of bullets.

'Good Lord. I think we just survived another attempted attack by the monsters, unscathed,' remarked Roger.'Truly a _deus ex machina_ moment, eh, Professor?'

Sarah and the Professor both looked unhappy. Templeman put his feelings into words.

'The aircraft with Albert and your private has not returned, Lieutenant Llewellyn. It _should_ have returned by now. The dig isn't far away, if that's where they went.'

Roger's face fell. Of course. How could he have forgotten? He held onto faint hope that they might have ditched the Lysander in the desert and be making their way back to Mersa Martuba on foot. After hours of waiting, he finally admitted to himself that the aircraft, with two men aboard it, was not coming back.

Sarah was now seriously worried about the Doctor. He must have been captured by the bio-vores, being gone this long!

Sub-Senior Kosadi was now Senior Kosad. He had decided to shorten his name without the formal ceremony, feeling that it gave him more kudos amongst the Warriors defending the trans-mat station complex. The only bio-vore who might have protested, Senior Fosor, was unable to complain, having been Eviscerated by Sub-Senior Kosadi when the latter felt his play for command was merited under the circumstances.

And the circumstances?

Rebellion! Mass revolt and murder committed by Farmers in their thousands! Figures were debatable, but perhaps half of the Farmer population of Lord Excellency Url's new bailiwick – he legally acquired it after removing Lord Excellency Sur – were in a state of open revolt. No communications with Sur's keep nor, as of a few hours ago, Url's castle, were possible.

Fosor had dallied in making requests for help from other aristocrats. He hadn't really believed that the Farmers could be so numerous and hostile. That changed after the massed hordes lying in siege beyond the dunes tried to storm the trans-mat complex, twice.

Thanks to the molten glass moat, and the heavy weapons sent in support from other Lords, they had beaten off both attacks, leaving a multitude of dead Farmers lying on the sands.

The defenders suffered casualties themselves. Not many, but still too many considering their paucity. A few dozen killed, a few dozen temporarily-alive who were quickly Eviscerated. Thanks to Fosor's delay in asking for help, the other Lords were now reluctant to send more than a fraction of their own forces, fearing the spread of revolt to their own Farmers. The trans-mat complex didn't have a Manufactory of it's own, or he'd have given orders for a few dozen Combat Cars to be constructed.

One of the more bizarre events during their siege was the materialisation, upon the trans-mat platform, of a nine-metre length of canvas and plywood, accompanied by a desperately cowering bio-vore whining about being attacked "from the air". Kosad had the wretch Eviscerated at once as a threat to morale, and for being completely mad as well.

Kosad ventured over to one of the science stations, checking to see how their besiegers were deployed. The life-signs scanners showed the frighteningly large mass on the landward side of the complex, waiting.

Waiting didn't really make sense, though, did it? Unless the masses beyond were waiting for night to fall.

'Can we increase the width of the glass moat?' he asked one of the technicians.

'No, Senior Kosad. The moat is at maximum width right now.'

Another technician raised an arm, wanting to ask a question.

'Senior Kosad, when can we expect bottled algae supplies? Some of us have not fed for today, yet.'

Kosad gestured to a panel, as if to make a technical point, in front of the technician, who turned back to face it. Kosad Eviscerated the technician on the spot.

'Supplies will only arrive once we defeat the rabble who have risen against us!' snapped Kosad. 'Bear that in mind! Victory or death, no other alternatives exist.'

He stamped angrily outside again, looking to see if he could catch any defender slacking or sleeping.

No. The defenders stood to their big-bore dart-throwers, the heavy stunners, the glass-mortars. All alert, all ready, all waiting expectantly.

Kosad and his garrison might have felt slightly complacent. This feeling was unwarranted, as they were pitching their wits against the Doctor, his knowledge of trans-mat systems and aerodynamics.

The defenders of the trans-mat complex were audibly assaulted by a tremendous crack, akin to the loudest peal of thunder imaginable. That was the arrival, on the trans-mat platform, of thirty thousand tons of silt and water displacing the air normally present on the platform. For a mere fraction of a second, the water piled a meter deep atop the platform retained a circular shape, before collapsing into full flow. This initial tidal wave of muddy water was followed by another one hundred and tweny thousand tons of icy clear water. Those bio-vores amongst the defenders who were not crushed or drowned outright were stunned into paralysed unconsciousness by the tidal wave, whose chill waters were exothermic anathema to them.

Out into the sands beyond rolled the tidal wave, onto the glass moat, cooling and cracking it amidst gigantic clouds of steam. Behind it, buildings collapsed under the weight of water, or when their foundations were washed away.

Those few scattered defenders who remained upright, and conscious, and aware, were then hit by stun rays and glass darts coming from the heavens, as forty three microlight gliders swooped in from the darkness and onto the trans-mat platform, arriving in a tumult of glass fragments and broken poles. These airborne commandoes stormed the trans-mat controls (abandoned when the technicians there had been swept away) and various buildings across the complex. From beyond the dunes, gradually getting closer, the sound of cheering, yelling Farmers could be heard as the besiegers broke from cover and joined in the capture of the complex.

Listening intently as he jogged closer, the Doctor couldn't help grinning foolishly in delight that his plan had worked. Recalling that bio-vores interpreted the humanoid grin as a threat, he reverted to a satisfied smirk. The half dozen bio-vores jogging alongside him as an escort felt happier when that feral grimace vanished.

Thanks be to Sorbusa, reflected the Doctor. If he hadn't mentioned that the complex on Target Fourteen fell into the sea, matters would have been far more difficult. The hang-gliders were a precaution, just in case the water got shut off too soon. Four had crashed along the way after taking off from the highest point of Lord Sur's castle, the penalty you paid for a primitive lighter than air craft with minimal crew training.

Twenty Eight: The Idea, The Time 

Sarah encountered resistance in promoting her idea of rescuing the Doctor.

'There are only six of us left, and you and the Professor are not soldiers,' carped Roger.

'Neither you nor Templeman are soldiers, and there are only six of us,' grumbled Dominione.

'Oh really! You two are the living end!' snapped Sarah, quite convinced that her idea was being stalled simply because she was a woman. 'I am quite capable of driving a truck, or pointing a gun if it comes to that.'

On cue, the two officers exchanged looks.

'Sarah,' said Roger, trying to remain patient. 'Those monsters know where we are. We have killed a considerable number of them, quite besides the slaughter inflicted by those Blenheim bombers we saw. They are going to be out for our blood! You cannot simply decide to march into Makin Al-Jinni and declare that you want Doctor Smith returned.'

Tenente Dominione was more subtle.

'At which point does this present, this time, our here-and-now, become the one you want it to be? How do you know? How do you know that Dottore Smith going missing is not how the future ought to be?'

Because it's not! raged Sarah silently. That's not how it is and it's not how it's going to be if I can help it!

'Of course! You're both quite correct!' she merely said, smiling sweetly and in a quiet conversational tone.

Roger took this reply at face value. Dominione, more experienced in the ways of womanhood, looked at her sceptically. Sarah responded with an expression of utter innocence that made the Italian even more sceptical.

'I would suggest that since the bio-vore's attack on the depot has been thwarted, we could move back there,' said Sarah. 'Torrevechio's giant blow-torch could do with refuelling, and we might also consider our friends approaching from the west.'

Her veiled reference to the predicted arrival of the Afrika Korps, and the Regio Esercito in close company, made Roger uneasy. Pretty obviously the depot could not be defended from an attack, not when the garrison amounted to himself alone. He was outnumbered three-to-one by the Italians, even if they were still observing the informal truce. Preparing Mersa Martuba for demolition – well, that was a possibility, perhaps if they pretended it needed to be kept out of bio-vore hands –

- aha! he realised, pleased with his own cleverness, fondling the key in his pocket.

'Not a bad idea, Miss Smith. I think we can head back now. Dominione, can you send one of your chaps ahead to man the look-out platform?'

Their rag-tag convoy picked its way across the rock and sandstone to the depot again, a depot now looking very battered. Sabotage inflicted by previous attacks, not to mention all the fighting within the grid of storage stacks, lent an air of untidy chaos to the whole area. Captain Dobie, had he survived, would have been appalled.

Sarah's idea, of course, had been to steal transport as soon as possible, and then make her way to Makin Al-Jinni, to rescue the Doctor. Or at least find out what he was up to, staying away for so long.

Her intent was noble, her opportunities were limited, and her success was negligible. The bio-vores had removed all the spare Sahariana's from the depot for recycling. The Doctor's spiking a fuel bowser days ago had destroyed the parked ranks of Bedford and Morris trucks. Torrevechio and Doretti kept a fatherly eye on their Sahariana's, and the towed Bedford was useless, the clutch destroyed.

'Psst,' came a sound, rather like a soda siphon. Sarah looked around in puzzlement, wondering who was making a gin and tonic at this point of the day?

'Psst! Miss Smith!' came the whisper once again. Reflexively raising her eyebrows, Sarah realised that Professor Templeman was trying to get her attention.

The vehicles were parked along the N1 track, where the Professor leant out from a stack of pallets and gestured to Sarah.

'I know where there's a truck,' he managed in a hoarse stage-whisper, taking her upper arm in a punishing grip and leading her away from the parked vehicles and soldiers. 'Doctor Smith sent it in as a decoy, remember? after draining the radiator, but it will still run for a while. We can get out to the dig in it, anyway.'

For a second Sarah remained nonplussed. Why on earth would the non-worldly Professor want to get over to the depot?

'I want to know what happened to Albert,' confided the Professor. 'Bourgebus was killed, poor devil, by these monsters. I just hope Albert wasn't, too. Damn it, did you know he never told me about being able to fly?'

Since there were only six of them in total, it wasn't hard for Sarah and the Professor to slip away to find the abandoned Chevrolet, which had rammed itself into a stack of telegraph poles, badly damaging the bumper and radiator. The ignition key remained where the Doctor left it, in the ignition. Templeman shuffled his considerable bulk into the driver's seat and they were off.

Their first obstacle was a long, uniform mound of sand that crested above the flat desert floor, winds whipping flurries off the top and into their cab. Templeman carefully drove up the dune at an angle, managing not to stall the truck.

Once down the other side they saw a ghastly landscape of shattered black tanks, bomb craters, shrapnel strikes and bio-vore bodies. This was the killing ground the Blenheim bombers had struck.

Sarah shut her eyes and gritted her teeth. The bio-vores were vile opponents, worthy of death, but this ghastly slaughter made her feel ill. War, she sternly told herself, is the worst possible human – no, not just human - the worst possible _sentient_ endeavour.

'You can open your eyes now,' said the Professor in a consoling tone. When she did, the baking heat of desert gravel and rock played in her face, untainted by death or destruction.

'What's that?' she asked, pointing out at the desert half a mile ahead. What looked, bizarrely and impossibly like a river, ribboned across the unforgiving terrain. The meandering strip grew more regular, until they reached it and recognised a "glass moat", as the Doctor would have described it. Ten yards across, featureless and smooth but for the sands drifting across it.

'It must be that molten glass Lieutenant Llewellyn mentioned,' worried Sarah. Their truck would sink in that stuff! And no way could they possibly cross on foot.

'If it was molten, then that blown sand would sink into it,' said Templeman, revealing his ability to apply logic. 'Also, we would be feeling the heat from here.'

Gunning it's now-protesting engine, the Chevrolet darted across the smooth surface entirely unharmed.

'Brilliant!' beamed Sarah, before remembering that they were shortly due to enter the lion's den.

'They've gone!' snarled Lieutenant Llewellyn. 'Don't ask me how but those two – those two – those – '

' "Civilians"?' suggested Dominione. He couldn't follow the English officer's speech, so the guess was based on the absence of that most charming and attractive young lady Miss Smith, and the altogether less pleasant Professore Templeman.

The tenente whistled to Doretti, who doubled over, his sub-machine gun over one shoulder.

'I fear we need to recover our civilian counterparts, Caporale,' ordered Dominione. 'Also,' he added, not looking at Lieutenant Llewellyn, 'We need to see if we can get beyond radio-jamming range in order to communicate with the Regio Esercito.'

'Sir!' saluted Doretti, able to maintain a poker-face.

'Cacciatore – we – ah – we – we – _hunt_,' tried the tenente in speech to Roger, mimicking tracking a person down. They took the command Sahariana, heading out over the desert towards Makin Al-Jinni.

The Doctor surveyed the vista before him.

The huge trans-mat complex, previously held in force by Warriors and others of Homeworld's elite, now lay in the hands of the Farmers. He regretted the fact that several hundred defenders had to die, killed defending a complex and a social system that was on it's way out. If only, if only –

A group of Farmers dragged a sodden, partly-stunned bio-vore from the recesses of a first floor science room. Those escorts flanking the Doctor, amongst others, hissed in recognition, grinning.

No, realised the Doctor, not _grinning_, actually baring teeth in a ritual threat. That prisoner, whoever he was, would be dead in seconds.

'Stop!' he boomed, recalling his music hall training. The group, and their struggling prisoner, stopped, waiting for his next speech.

'Enough killing has taken place here today. We must send these survivors to other lord's lands, across the archipelago, across the sea and across the continent.'

If the Doctor had ordered the Farmers present to sit upside down on the floor and hum "Rule Britannia", he would have been obeyed, so high was his stock.

The drenched prisoner, divested of equipment, was brought before the Doctor, making a pathetic spectacle.

'Hello! So pleased to meet you! I'm The Doctor, formally known to your fellows as "Thedoctor".'

The shivering bio-vore, barely able to concentrate, looked at the small alien with wonder.

'You do not seek to kill me or drain my life-energy?'

The Doctor pursed his lips and made a rude sound.

'Certainly not! In return, you need to look around you and witness what has happened here. Pass the message on.'

Senior Kosad (the prisoner) looked around, seeing the temporarily-alive bio-vores who had been defending the trans-mat complex – seeing them – and here he needed to make sure his eyes were functioning properly - seeing them helped into thermal recovery, sent to triage stations, divested of weapons and equipment. No Eviscerations. None. None at all. Plus, he was alive. By all normal criteria, he should be long dead.

'What is this!' he whispered in complete and utter confusion, darting a glance back at Thedoctor.

'Equality!' snapped the Doctor. 'Tolerance. Compassion. The respect of one sapient life-form for another.'

Kosad spent what might have been five seconds or five hours watching the rescue and recovery operation going on. "Rescue" and "recovery" were concepts he had to invent before actually confronting the words themselves.

Finally, he was brought to face the small alien.

'Goodbye, Kosad. I doubt we will ever meet again. Think of what you have seen here, however!'

The Senior drew himself up to full height, towering far above the small alien.

'I shall. Your name cannot be Thedoctor. I salute you, Doctor.'

With a wail of sirens, Senior Kosad went off to a bailiwick half the world away.

Nurbonissa came to ask questions, only to be pre-empted by the Doctor.

'Before you ask, Nurbonissa, yes we did need to release those prisoners. That's fifty of them sent away to other Lord's lands. Your agenda and their message will travel, Nurbonissa. Farmers not being ruled or exploited or Eviscerated. Medicine and surgery for the sick and the injured. A methodology to revitalise Waste- to revitalise Homeworld.'

Other bio-vores of the escort came in to listen.

'Will our rebellion succeed?' asked one.

'Undoubtedly!' replied the Doctor. 'I'm not one to pay credit to old Vladimir Illyich, but one of his phrases is most appropriate here: "Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come." '

Privately, the Doctor felt quite pleased at progress here on Homeworld. The aristocratic system, with it's feudal fascism, had suffered a near-fatal blow in the space of a few days. Given a few months, the Farmers would have achieved liberation.

'What methodology?' asked another of the escort.

The Doctor produced a glass scroll, etched with his trusty sonic screwdriver (a liberated trophy from Lord Sur's castle), remembering what he'd written there.

TOWARDS AN AQUEOUS ECO-RETRIEVAL OPTION

Recall your amphibious past. Your long-distant ancestors came from the sea. Currently, the land is not conducive to long-term survival.

Ergo, treat the land as an occasional resort. You currently harvest and crop sufficient algae to sustain your population from a single level.

Create other such levels by marine inversion manipulation. This will increase algae harvests by a factor between 5 and 10.

Using the trans-mat Infiltration Complex on Target Fourteen, you can irrigate the desert hinterland by importing millions of tonnes of water. This would be a long-term project.

By using the same Infiltration Complex, you can acquire alien piscine life-forms and re-populate your oceans with marine life.

Heavier than air flight is possible.

When Imgellisa was presented with the scroll, he got a box with it.

'Seeds,' explained the Doctor. 'From the TARDIS' life-science laboratory storage. Date palm, coconut palm, saguarro cactus, yucca, various succulents. Take good care of them.'

The big alien made a nodding gesture in compliance.

'We have one request to make of you, Doctor.' The three-syllable name had been shortened to two by all who spoke to him, out of respect. 'We do not want to be tempted by the Infiltration Complex on Target Seventeen, the world you call "Earth". Can you destroy it when you return?'

'Absolutely!' said the Doctor, with entirely unfounded enthusiasm, returning to the TARDIS and waiting for the trans-mat to send him back to Earth.

Travelling back in his own, familiar, big blue box allowed the errant Time Lord to check on dates: his arrival back at Makin Al-Jinni occurred on the 1st of April 1941, which meant he had very little time to spare before the entire Axis forces present in North Africa passed either through or nearby the depot at Mersa Martuba. Hours, in fact. Hours before the bio-vore garrison killed or captured humans en masse, sufficient to perpetuate the alien existence on Earth. There might be losses on both sides, but the bio-vores could repopulate far, far faster than humans, given the bio-morphic energy available.

Luckily he had arranged for a bait-and-switch delay with the Farmers back on Homeworld. Thus, when the TARDIS appeared on the platform at the Earth end of the trans-mat link, nearly fifty Warriors surmounted the platform, pointing weapons (in some cases firing those weapons) at the blue box.

A minute later, those Warriors were suddenly firing at the big blue box whilst standing on the trans-mat platform on Homeworld. Under a barrage of stunners from Farmers lying in pre-arranged wait, the imported Warriors wilted and dropped, to be dragged from the platform.

Back went the TARDIS. As expected, the second sting didn't capture many Warriors, only a dozen. Back went the TARDIS. The Doctor relocated the time-machine off to one side of the trans-mat, down on the desert floor and away from harm or attention.

This time, and after waiting for long enough to complete another chapter of "The Yawning Heights", the Doctor dared to open the doors of his spaceship, having taken a peek beyond on the scanner and seen that nobody was lying in wait.

'Ah, the fresh air of a desert dawn!' he enthused to the Infiltration Complex. Indeed, the air had a calm, cool quality that only existed at dawn and dusk, and the sun had not yet risen high enough to begin it's relentless solar assault.

He cast glances to left and right, seeing running bio-vores, those familiar black tanks chugging slowly over the complex floor, and the Headquarters building burnt and battered, great chunks of masonry blasted out of the massed pylons. A twisted, contorted pile of metal and wooden framework lay further inside the colonnaded building.

'I suspect a posthumous award is in the reckoning,' mused the Time Lord to himself. A glass shard went whining past his nose, causing him to jerk back and pay attention to matters closer at hand.

'Take me to your leader!' he called, biting his cheek at the use of the old science-fiction cliché.

The bio-vores responsible for shooting at him on a reflex and thus inaccurately, stopped when they realised that the small alien, Thedoctor, the one who ought to have been killed a dozen times over, had returned.

Being frog-marched by creatures many times more powerful than he meant the Doctor went when they wanted, not where he wished. He ended up in one of the three smaller buildings dedicated to scientific purposes, facing an unfamiliar bio-vore.

'Detachment Leader, we captured this alien on the trans-mat platform. He demanded to be brought here,' announced one of the escorts. Tellingly, he remained facing the Detachment Leader, and did not exhibit any trace of respect. The Doctor recognised these as two symptoms of a lesser daring to indirectly threaten a superior. There must have been endless killings amongst the command levels here!

'Just a warning!' exclaimed the Doctor, brightly and with considerable enthusiasm. All eyes were upon him. 'Yes, just to say that the trans-mat on Homeworld is now under the control of Farmers. In - ' and he checked his half-hunter ' – about five minutes from now, they will be accepting their last ever transmission from here on Target Seventeen, back to Homeworld.'

Predictably, this rumour went around the complex in seconds, leading to a sudden rush of bio-vores for the trans-mat platform. Within five minutes of the Doctor's message about the last chance to get home, only a few dozen bio-vores were left alive and in the complex. Detachment Leader Kaybol (who had been Under-Technician Kaybollatri a few hours ago) stamped around until finding the Doctor, who was lounging on a pillar, contemplating his work and how long it might take until Homeworld enjoyed genuine freedom.

'You are under sentence of death!' crowed Kaybol. 'You will be executed!' He sounded positively happy. 'Eliminated! Eviscerated!'

'Don't push out the funereal boat too soon,' rejoined the Doctor. 'Most of your garrison here seem to be either dead or back on Homeworld.'

Kaybol grinned the feral bio-vore grin and made as if to lunge at the Doctor.

'Fool! All I need now is a source of fodder. Even hay, as you term your fodder, will do.'

'It'll take more than hay or hazel,' caried on the Doctor. 'You're entirely cut-off from Homeworld with no escape.'


	15. Chapter 15

Twenty Nine: Operations End 

Detachment Leader Kaybol's little domain had contracted within minutes of the Doctor's emergence from the TARDIS, informing the bio-vores in the Infiltration Complex that they had one last chance to get home.

Morale amongst the aliens was not good. They had, it is true, found and drained the life-energies of several hundred humans, and recovered metal artefacts that enabled more robust vehicles to be constructed. However, they had also been subjected to a bombing raid from the air, first by the frightening but ineffectual Lysander, secondly by the utterly terrifying and most definitely effectual Blenheims. Nor was that all. No reinforcements had come through by trans-mat since the rebellion back on Homeworld. No reinforcements, and no bottled algae, either. Faced with the prospect of being stranded on a world where attack from the air was commonplace, where half their detachment were dead, and where bio-morphic energy was in short supply, most of the detachment opted for Homeworld.

That left the leader-assumptant, Kaybol, and a few other bio-vores, perhaps two dozen in all. Detachment Leader Kaybol, having discovered his miniature fiefdom shrinking in numbers, had been told "It's the small alien doing it!" and set out to find and kill the small alien. That heretic Sorbusa had failed to kill the small alien, likewise Lord Excellency Sur, and several detachment leaders besides. Enough of that! Kaybol determined that he would kill the small alien.

Perhaps it escaped his attention that the small alien survived through it's own wits, not only the failings of others.

When Kaybol darted out his proboscis, threatening Thedoctor with slow death, the small alien held up a network of fibres strung between it's hands, catching the detachment leader's proboscis and trapping it between the strands. 'Cat's Cradle!' chortled the small alien. With a wrench, Kaybol dragged himself free from the trap, only to find it bound tightly around his proboscis, making his eyes water with the pain.

By the time he dragged the fibres free, Thedoctor was gone. Two more bio-vores came up to assist their leader, as he thought, gesturing towards the vanished alien.

'We must pursue!' he began. Began, and ended.

Instead of helping, the two Sub-Senior's Eviscerated Kaybol, who they felt had failed. Besides, they were hungry.

Darting away from Kaybol, the Doctor merely rounded the end wall of the small science building and circled it, aiming to get back to where he came from. He witnessed the end of Kaybol, without regret, and made his way back into the nearest science building. The paucity of bio-vores meant this was fairly easy.

Worryingly, the various life-scanners, display screens and information panels within the building were set by default on the Mediterranean coastline.

Oh, my, thought the Doctor to himself. The Mediterranean: a littoral zone with a desert hinterland – much like Homeworld. Just what these aliens would be familiar with.

Except, and a big difference here, the life-signs equipment showed a fantastic array of life in the Mediterranean. Millions of tons of fish.

Easier prey than humans, realised the Doctor. Fish might have body armour in the form of scales, and weapons in the form of teeth, yet nothing they possessed compared to human weapons technology. Bio-vores who managed to get into the Mediterranean would have an unlimited harvest to reap. Planet Earth would never be free of them.

'Doctor!' came a warning shout from outside, a voice he recognised.

'Sarah!' replied the Doctor, whirling round expecting to see her, and coming face-to-face instead with a bio-vore. Beyond, looking nervous, Sarah and Professor Templeman hovered in the building's doorway.

This alien was only six feet tall, and far thinner than any he had encountered so far. One of those energy-dependent offspring reproduced as a result of the bio-vores "harvesting" human life-energies.

'Would you like to talk about it?' tried the Doctor, holding both hands up, palms outward at shoulder-level in the universal sign for non-combatant. The bio-vore hissed loudly, stamping forward.

'Excuse me!' came a shrill female voice from just beyond the doorway, followed by a stone that struck the alien, which turned. It hissed again, until Sarah advanced, holding one hand aloft. Then it growled, preparing to attack.

The Doctor watched in horrified fascination as the alien slowly moved forward, growling and waving it's proboscis. He drew in his breath, ready to shout and divert the alien's attention.

Instead, Sarah thrust her hand forward. There came a hiss, a fine spray squirted into the air and fell on the alien, which shrieked appallingly, backed away and then ran full speed at the far wall of the building's interior, coming to a sudden and abrupt halt when it hit the wall.

Carefully, the Doctor approached the motionless body.

'Hmm. Quite dead,' he commented. 'Shock, endothermic imbalance or impact trauma.'

A pair of footfalls in the building heralded Sarah and the Professor.

'Sarah! How happy I am to see you!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'And you, too, Professor,' he added when the latter coughed diplomatically.

Sarah held up a small glass bottle with a spray top.

'Chanel Number Five,' she remarked ruefully. 'The last of it, too.'

'Remarkably brave girl, that,' blustered the Professor. 'We came to see what had kept you, Doctor. Miss Smith insisted that you must be in trouble to be away for so long.'

The Doctor shook his head.

'Matters elsewhere kept me busy. Which reminds me - '

Under the eyes of the two humans, he went about putting a particular critical information-set into the science building's equipment. Having done that, he used the sonic screwdriver to shatter and destroy the instrument panels, one after the other.

'Time to leave,' he cautioned them.

Once outside, he headed towards the TARDIS, leading Sarah and the Professor at a moderate jog.

'What's the hurry and where's the fire?' asked Sarah. 'For your information, Doctor, I don't want to do any more running in the sand. Our truck gave up and died at the line of tents out there and we had to sneak in on tiptoes.'

Suddenly, as if struck by an idea from nowhere, the Doctor stopped.

'What _is_ the hurry?' he asked. Neither Sarah nor the Professor knew if this was a rhetorical question, a question being asked of them or (in the case of Sarah) a question being asked of the Time Lords. 'No, I mean, where are all the bio-vores?' asked the Doctor.

None of the aliens were present in the complex. From the middle distance a machine-gun began to fire, a stuttering bang-bang-bang. Moments of silence followed, then more gunfire, then silence again.

'I think the rats have left the sinking ship,' declared Sarah. She was more correct than she realised.

No bio-vores present, and those tell-tale displays in the science building – they are headed for the shoreline! realised the Doctor.

'Look at those,' said Templeman, pointing at a triple series of tracks leading over the sand-basin walls.

Exit tracks, recognised all three witnesses. The bio-vores had fled in their black glass machineries.

On cue, a Sahariana came lurching over the crest of the basin, heading downwards with one man driving, the other next to him hugging a machine-gun. The vehicle skidded to a halt, Tenente Dominione leaning out of the driver's seat to bow and salute mockingly.

Fifteen minutes later the desert car proceeded slowly westwards, a big blue box secured on the rear decking, the Doctor, Sarah and the Professor all crammed into any available space.

'Three black tanks came out of the dig,' explained Dominione. 'We opened fire but our bullets just bounced off.'

'Head for the depot,' ordered the Doctor. 'They won't bother with it any longer.' Not when they can head for the burgeoning shores of the Med, anyway, he told himself.

They got closer to Mersa Martuba, hearing occasional bangs and rattles reminiscent of gun battles, then closer, and closer – and abruptly came across a scene of brief battle and slaughter.

The Sahariana mounting the flamethrower and a black tank were locked together, burning furiously. The Sahariana had been partly shattered, the black tank split open and roasted by and flames. Fragments of glass, metal and wood lay on the desert sands. No tracks from survivors led away from either vehicle.

Dominione clenched his fists alternately and muttered curses about Torrevechio's end in an undertone, spitting onto the desert sands.

'Not another one of us dead!' said Sarah, the shock and horror in her tone manifest without any need for translation. Tenente Dominione turned in his seat to look at her with a wondering expression.

'Human feeling for human loss, Tenente,' commented the Doctor, an undertone of iron in his voice.

Dominione brought the Sahariana to a halt, reaching for a pair of Austrian binoculars under his seat. He focussed carefully, seeing a black tank racing back across the desert, way to the south of Mersah Martuba, returning to the dig at Makin Al-Jinni.

'This is strange, Dottore. Another of the monster's vehicle's is heading east. They must be trying to get back home.'

That left the second vehicle unaccounted for. All five in the Sahariana realised that much.

Sub-Technician Tecwalata lowered his dart-gun and padded across the beaten track, to where the human had been firing his weapon.

Yes, the human was dead. Finally! The human equivalent of a Detachment Leader. Shock-haired, short and hit in half-a-dozen places by darts, the human had nevertheless managed to kill five bio-vores with that peculiarly noisy weapon-mechanism fed-by-belt. Wretched creature. In the last moments it had seemed to be trying to get across the track, away from the safety of it's emplacement. Heading for that human vehicle?

Tecwalata had only six companions left, six from the hundreds who had come through the trans-mat with him.

Well, no problem. A short drive northwards would lead to the bio-morphically blessed waters of the Mediterranean sea. There, he and his survivors would be able to replicate a thousand-fold, preying on the waterborne lifeforms there. From seven they would become seven million in a matter of weeks. That was inevitable, given the amount of bio-morphic energy available.

'Tecwalata!' called another sub-technician. 'Our transport is exhausted. No more energy remains.'

As if to prove the point, their massive black Combat Car simply sat on the ground gravel of the encampment's entrance route. Dead. Inert.

'It's all those metallic additions,' muttered a technician to Tecwalata. 'Increase the weight, decrease the endurance.'

'Yes, thank you!' grated Tecwalata. His eyes fell upon the human transport vehicle nearby. Fell, understood and gloated.

What a perfect opportunity! Just as their own vehicle ceased to function, here was a replacement. These human vehicles utilised exothermic liquids as fuel, a fuel that was in plentiful supply here in the depot. Not only that, a human vehicle would allow them to approach the coastline in perfect safety, unrecognised as aliens! They could get to the sea easily and rapidly!

'The dead human was trying to reach the transport vehicle, Sub-Technician,' declared another technician. 'This device was in it's hand.'

Tecwalata took the proffered tiny template, a ridged spur jutting from a circular handle. From a slot in the handle dangled a short length of string and a paper tag.

"PROPERTY LT R LLEWELLYN RASC

**DANGER!**

**NOT TO BE USED!**"

'Here is a matching slot,' observed a Warrior, noseying around in the cab. Tecwalata nodded and inserted the template, twitching it carefully one way and then the other. Given his strength and how weak these humans were, it wouldn't do to –

A bright orange flash lit up the whole desert for a mile around, making every occupant of the Sahariana flinch. Awestruck, they saw a great boiling cloud of smoke, flame, dust and debris rise from the depot not half a mile away.

'Ahhhh. About nought point nought two five kilotonnes yield,' estimated the Doctor, screwing up his eyes and judging from flash, intensity, duration and location.

Tenente Dominione, once again quick on the uptake, threw the desert car into reverse, skidded into a half-circle, faced them back across the sands and raced forward, punishing the clutch and gears in order to get a safe distance between them and the great crimson, curdling explosion.

Sarah looked backwards, appalled, seeing great secondary explosions and the arc of shells set off by sympathetic detonation. An enormous dusty curtain of sand and dust raced over the gravel towards them, eventually hitting the car like a hammer.

'Stop! Stop!' called the Doctor, coughing and choking in the half-light left by the passing blanket of dust and sands.

Dominione cocked an inquisitive eyebrow, braking to a slow forward.

'Before we left Makin Al-Jinni, I set the geothermal spike array to maximum intake but minimum discharge.'

People looked at each other.

The Doctor sighed.

'A self-destruct mechanism. Normally the complex staff would be able to divert the energy, usually by the pylon. Without that they'd use the instrument panels to organise energy dischage.'

'Those would be the energy-manipulating panels you destroyed?' asked Sarah, to a nod from her mentor.

The Doctor pictured the surviving bio-vores arriving back at their complex, seeking to recharge their Combat Car, only to be informed that their equipment wasn't able to recharge. The sabotage would have escalated enormously by then, without any staff on hand to restrict or remedy it. Seeking out the source of the sabotage –

An incredibly acute, purple-white flash came from the depths of the desert, at approximately where Makin Al-Jinni would have been. Two minutes later odd bits of glass and granite began to fall amongst them, the remnants of the archaeological dig.

Just to make sure, the Sahariana and crew hung around for another twelve hours. Nothing moved in the desert apart from them.

Professor Templeman stared at his scuffed, dusty shoes, the laces heavy with sand. Bourgebus had died early on, a victim of the sinister alien machines. Albert, that dark horse, had vanished over the dig at Makin Al-Jinni. The entire dig, with all its evidence, had been blasted to bits. No surviving aliens remained. He had no evidence to put forward in any thesis or paper. Dead end.

'Very well,' said the Tenente. 'Due west leads to Axis forces.'

'Indeed!' beamed the Doctor. 'And the first formation you will meet will be the Thirty Third Reconaissance Battalion of the Afrika Korps. Make sure to tell them that the depot at Mersa Martuba – codenamed "Fledermaus" if I remember correctly – that the depot has been successfully destroyed by it's defenders.'

Doretti waved excitedly.

'Sir! Sir, I can pick up Twentieth Corps! The jamming has finished!'

Dominione looked acutely at his passengers.

'Time for us to depart, I feel,' muttered the Doctor.

'I think it is, perhaps, time for our truce to expire,' said the Italian officer, reaching almost unconsciously for his Beretta sub-machine gun.

'What's going to happen to me?' complained Professor Templeman, nudging Sarah in the ribs. ' I'm not a soldier! You can't hold me as a prisoner of war!'

Sarah began to edge to the rear of the desert car, preparing herself for a dart around the corner of the TARDIS, only to be forestalled by the Doctor, who looked uncharacteristically serious.

'Tenente. Consider what you have experienced over the past few days. Look at your command – reduced from dozens of men to one soldier and a single vehicle.'

Doretti spat over the side of the Sahariana.

'Monsters!' he swore.

'Ah-ah,' denied the Doctor, shaking his head. 'Precious few monsters. Mostly the products of a monstrous _system_. A system and civilisation based on exploitation, oppression and casual murder. Does that sound particularly relevant or close to home, Tenente?'

Dominione's cheeks burnt crimson. This alleged time-traveller from the future was criticising the Italian Fascist state!

'Germany loses, you know,' chirped Sarah. 'Over-run by the Russians and the British and Americans. Of course that's after Italy gets fought over by the Allies and the Germans after it surrenders.'

Doretti stared at Sarah, then at his officer.

'Yes, _thank you_ Sarah!' added the Doctor. 'The whole war will take a major turn for the worse when Germany invades the Soviet Union in less than three months. Twenty-second of June of this year, Tenente. The Italian Eighth Army ends up destroyed in the Stalingrad battles. Oh, not forgetting when America joins in the war.'

Feeling under information attack, Dominione responded.

'America? America is a neutral country!' Doretti nodded vehemently, aware that he had at least a dozen cousins living abroad in the United States.

'Only until December the Seventh. During – oh, what is the name now? Operation Scimitar – no – Operation Saracen – ah! I remember! Operation Crusader.'

Doretti and the Tenente exchanged glances. Doretti felt their other-worldly helper was going slowly mad. Dominione wondered which of them was going mad, because if it wasn't the Dottore then it had to be him.

'What about me!' whined Templeman, standing up in righteous indignation, and once again nudging Sarah. The Italian officer looked coldly at the professor.

'You, sir, are a non-combatant. I will guarantee that you are repatriated via the Red Cross. My word as an officer.'

'Can I have that in writing?' asked the Professor, a sly look in his eyes.

'Yes!' snapped the officer.

Having said that, Dominione looked back for Miss Smith and Doctor Smith.

They were both gone.

Not only that, the big wooden box strapped to the rear of the car began to groan and moan, gradually becoming transparent, then vanishing completely.

The Professor, Dominione and Doretti exchanged looks, not really understanding what they'd seen.

'Yes. Well. Would either of you care for a cup of tea?' asked Templeman.

Epilogue: No Thank You But Paper Instead 

'Mistress!' greeted K9, a sure sign that the Time Lords had finished their electronic paralysis of the robot dog.

'Don't try to curry favour with me!' huffed Sarah. 'We could have used you out there.'

Like a mother hen, the Doctor fussed and checked over the TARDIS consoles, quite oblivious to what his companions were up to.

'Oh, I say, look at this!' enthused Sarah, having come across a collection of papers lying on the TARDIS central console. They hadn't been there when the duo regained the spaceship's interior.

'Eh? Oh. Hmm. I do wish the Time Lords would stop messing about with my TARDIS,' grumbled the Doctor. 'Does it say thank you?'

'No,' replied Sarah, slowly and doubtfully.

'Typical!' muttered the Doctor, setting co-ordinates. 'A little gratitude once in a while doesn't hurt.'

Sarah perused the top document, which seemed to be taken from a sequence, since it began in mid-sentence and didn't have a title.

" elements of the 276th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, the 47th Infantry Division and the 3rd Fallschirmjaeger Brigade counter-attacked the bridgehead under cover of heavy artillery and Nebelwerfer fire. Faced with this attack, and unable to reinforce the bridgehead, Brigadier McKenzie decided to withdraw his lead battalion back across the River Corso.

'Capitane Dominione of the Co-Belligerent Forces volunteered to stay behind with a rearguard and hold off the enemy until the remainder of the battalion could retreat and be taken off the north bank by boat.

'Under Capitane Dominione's guidance, the Vickers platoon set up on the ridgeline and threw back three enemy attacks, inflicting heavy losses on the German attackers. Capitaine Dominione was badly wounded, twice, but refused to be evacuated and insisted on manning the last working Vickers gun himself. Sergente Doretti also insisted on staying. Under their covering fire the last of the rearguard were able to be brought off, completing the evacuation of the battalion.

'When the battalion was able to recross the river and pursue the retreating German forces several days later, the graves of Capitaine Dominione and Sergente Doretti were found, presumably interred by the Germans.

'German prisoners subsequently taken informed Brigadier McKenzie that the two Italians had fought on, surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned, refusing to surrender and thus holding up the German advance, which reached the river over half an hour too late to intercept the retreating battalion.

'It is my contention that, without the splendid efforts of Capitain Dominione in leading the rearguard, and finally holding off the Germans himself, several hundred members of the battalion would have been killed or captured. I have no hesitation in recommending him for the Silver Cross of Valour, and in recommending Sergente Doretti for the Bronze Cross of Valour."

In pencil an unknown hand had scribbled in the margin: "Bloody unusual for the Hun to bury Eyeties fighting for us! Must have impressed them no end. See if you can add this to Rgt dispatches. Pass on to Alex for info."

Sarah dropped the paper to the floor, feeling stricken.

'They died! After going through all that we did, and surviving the bio-vores, and they died!'

The Doctor picked up a slip of paper from beneath the typed sheet.

'You missed this,' he said softly, passing it to Sarah.

This was a much smaller piece of card, with an embossment and lots of red ink.

"Father: Capitane Lucio Mario Dominione

Mother: Maria Donatella Dominione

Christian Name: Angelina

Surname: Dominione

Date of Birth: 18/2/1944

ISSUED BY ORDER OF AMGOT NAPLES 21/2/1944"

An illegible scrawl lay along the bottom.

'Oh! A birth certificate!' realised Sarah. 'So – he went back to Italy. He got married and had a daughter.' Her tone lightened a little. A child, something positive to come from this particular adventure.

'If he was in the Co-Belligerent Forces, he was fighting alongside the British in the Eighth Army. Must have volunteered to fight,' mused the Doctor. 'Bit ironic, really – ending up alongside the men he'd been fighting against.'

He caught the look in Sarah's eye.

'Now, now, Sarah. They didn't die in vain. Together they helped to save Earth from a pestilential alien threat.'

What the Doctor wondered, and might never discover, was why the two Italians had changed sides, volunteering to fight against their former allies and in concert with former enemies. Perhaps his parting words about what the future held for them bore fruit. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

'Did – or does – Professor Templeman survive?' asked Sarah. She wasn't especially fond of the big old oaf, but someone from their comrades ought to survive.

'Eh? Oh, the Professor. Yes, he does. Never quite the same afterwards, the university establishment always thought of him as "odd" after his desert adventure. Went to Israel, if my memory serves correctly.'

'And - ' began Sarah, before the Doctor waved an irritated hand.

'Yes! Yes, the bio-vore Farmers will successfully overthrow their slave-and-cull society. Might take as long as a year, but it will happen. Hopefully without too much bloodshed.'

With a nod of approval, Sarah headed off to have a shower. She was filthy, dirty, sandy and dried-out. Emotionally she felt wrung-out. She now began to understand why the Doctor hated war and conflict so much. Before she closed the door the Doctor caught her with a verbal Partian shot.

'Oh, you might care to know, Angelina Piccoli will have a son who helps to establish the North African Irrigation Project. Imagine that, wheatfields in the heart of the Sahara. Angelina Piccoli, nee Dominione.'

'How I can appreciate that!' said Sarah over her shoulder. 'Water, precious water.'

'Water?' asked the German NCO of the liaison officer, Captain Hertz, waving a water bottle under the officer's nose.

'No, not yet,' replied the lanky officer, climbing up on the back of the big armoured car.

He'd come out here to Mersa Martuba with the leading elements of the 33rd Reconaissance Battalion, to see what they could capture from the British supply depot reported to be located there.

Well, "nothing" seemed to be the answer. Von Dem Borne, not to mention Rommel, wouldn't like that, however true it was. The depot didn't exist any more, having been flattened totally. No mud huts, palm trees, water or anything else, just half a square kilometre of what looked like a great glass crater, now crazed and split by the elements.

Hertz sighed.

'Nothing to see, nothing to steal. Nothing happening here at all, Feldwebel. Let's get back to the rest of the battalion.'

Behind them the desert gravel, sand and stone remained baking in the sun, untouched.

A real waste of time! judged Hertz. There was nothing out here.


End file.
